roseweird posted:

we would like to talk about these matters because they concern us deeply and directly affect our most basic human interests. but we avoid talking about them just for the reason you said, "I am very leery of any socio-political theory that is an evolutionary theory." really, we want to tell everyone whether they are fit human material or not, judging them according to the sort of humanity we would like to exist in the future, but not only would this be brutal and rude, but more generally we are afraid to follow through on the place of biology in materialist thought, at least out loud and in plain language

Uh. No. When i said i was leery of evolutionary sociopolitical theory that's extremely not why. Im leery of such theory because when you take evolution out of its very specific biological context and start (indirectly) applying it in other fields, i.e. positing a natural progression in some social or cultural construction, you risk two things:

1) understanding different kinds of society, political systems, etc as sitting somewhere along a horizontal scale where one end is 'least evolved' and the other 'most evolved', and
2) tying the eveolvedness of a society to some presupposed evolvedness of its people.

I would have expected thats an obvious problem? It has always seemed to me that this is a major flaw in marxist thought, at least as originally developed.. that it is eurocentric. I am not learned enough in MLM to be sure thats a fair comment or assess how much that remains a problem in contemporary strains of marxism. Still, I am not aware of explicit eugenicist thought gaining much traction in marxism as such.

Now i think youre right when you say that people who hold eugenicist beliefs are likely to not be keen to discuss them, at least not explicitly. But i dont agree at all that most people necessarily hold such beliefs, nor that such beliefs often form part of leftist political beliefs.

Do you mind explaining what you mean when you say you 'support eugenics'?

blinkandwheeze posted:

the one-child policy was instituted following the chinese thermidor & as such holds little relevance to the concerns of revolutionary socialism. in any case, i don't see how concerns towards birth rates alone hold any particular resemblance to eugenics because that's strictly a quantitative focus and doesn't carry any particular heed to the qualitative concerns eugenics necessitates

the soviet concept of the new man is not presented as a goal in itself or the means to an end, the basis of the new man is simply that men are social beings, the qualities of our existence are consistently mutable, primarily influenced by dominant social structures, in particular the governing mode of production. therefore, as socialism is developed, so is the character of the subjects of a socialist society as they participate actively within these structures

this entails an understanding of the personality and ability of the individual as not being fixed qualities but as being formed procedurally by social interaction. the basis of the emergence of the new man is not that they are granted qualitative distinction simply because they are born under a new mode of production, but that they develop these qualitative distinctions through the continuous process of interacting with the facets of this mode by participating in collective labour. the promotion of the new man was an appeal towards a voluntarist, conscious participation in the building of socialism by any individual, independently of natural character

eugenics is the idea that the qualitative aspects of human existence are inscribed on some level on physical being itself and that physical, as opposed to social, processes can as such be used to manage the prevalence of such qualities. the ideas have little relevance to each other

I took a class on soviet literature and we discussed the new man and the professor was obviously extremely cynical about it but I was like "this is cool actually"

Petrol posted:

Do you mind explaining what you mean when you say you 'support eugenics'?

rw said she moved to a city in the midwest, so i can completely understand adopting a eugenics-positive position after experiencing that for a longer than a month

getfiscal posted:

if there really is a sort of moral culture that needs to be cultivated i'm not sure that would bode well for marxism-leninism as practiced by stalin or mao. which is explicitly what khrushchev came up with when he had them say that the only end for socialism was man. if socialism is a sort of development of human species-being then that probably implies that you can't have things like gulags and secret trials and such. also as an aside i'm not sure being ruthless is even smart.

getfiscal posted:

over the last year or so i've only really been thinking in althusserian terms i guess, which i'm trying to get away from somewhat, and therefore i didn't care about soviet newman stuff because it seemed like it was a weird hegelian idea. like, the idea of a sort of proletarian culture where humanity is fully realized, seems more like lukacs than anything else.

if there really is a sort of moral culture that needs to be cultivated i'm not sure that would bode well for marxism-leninism as practiced by stalin or mao. which is explicitly what khrushchev came up with when he had them say that the only end for socialism was man. if socialism is a sort of development of human species-being then that probably implies that you can't have things like gulags and secret trials and such. also as an aside i'm not sure being ruthless is even smart.

soviet newman was a really odd character, even for Seinfeld. I'm glad that was a one-time thing and not a running gag

roseweird posted:

Petrol posted:

Do you mind explaining what you mean when you say you 'support eugenics'?

i mean that biological material and cultural expression define each other in a tightly coupled feedback loop, that social structure is a primary form of both modulation and expression of biological differentiation, and that people generally practice some form or another of eugenic hygiene in their lives and politics regardless of their stated beliefs

can you explain your support for eugenics without the rhetoric?

Tokyo_Sexwale posted:

jesus i come back to this thread to see it go from defending russian inperialism to defending eugenics, if i check it in a month its prolly gonna be posts like hitler had some good ideas lmao

as you wanted to associate all these ideas VICE style like they were in any way related or even advanced by the same people this post is a Fail

c_man posted:

i dont see why it should be at all contentious that social factors are interdependent with biological factors in the human condition. for example if you are in a society in which you dont have necessary access to healthy food this has an effect on your physical body. this is the same body that you then must use to interact with society to try and get the things you need to live. there's all sorts of stuff about light skin being preferable to upper classes because it signified not having to work outside, which is a consequence of a biological process. then there is a social pressure to buy things like skin whiteners that can have lots of undesirable biological effects, which in turn make it less pleasant to inhabit that body, perhaps making some people ill or depressed, which have social consequences. or: if, due to social interactions, a bomb gets dropped onto where you live, your body's metabolism is likely to be severely, even fatally, disrupted. claiming that social structures don't have biological consequences is absurd.

You're completely missing the point. roseweird claimed that "biological material and cultural expression define each other in a tightly coupled feedback loop". It's a huge leap from the kinds of observable interactions between society and the body that you describe, and the biological determinism roseweird supports.

My god. have you all discussed behind my back how to troll me or what. I'm starting to despair