#81
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#82
UNUSUALY COOL
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how does capitalism "just win", even capitalists understand the idea of resource shortages leading to global political upheaval or catastrophic events shattering the market. The only people who think this is the end of history are a small gang of media buffoons whose interns wrote their columns and even they have mostly shut up about it since 2007 in a futile attempt to look less ridiculous to petit-bourgeois readers
#83
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cars posted:

how does capitalism "just win",




#84
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#85
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the catastrophic risk industry is also a form of bourgeois ideology. those risks are real but the assessments of them by people like Elon Musk and basic cable channels are not. one major way that's true is that "academic" work on catastrophic risk treats proletarian revolution as roughly equivalent to a meteor strike, which serves both to stigmatize socialist politics and to remove them to the realm of the unthinkably remote.
#86
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#87
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The difference between ultras and MLs is there are like a hundred of the former, all on the internet, while the latter is billions of people, most of whom are people of color and therefore don't get to have opinions on philosophy.
#88
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Caesura109 posted:

Not sure what the catastrophic risk industry is,



it's what currently tells liberals in the media to compare socialism with the end of the world and it's probably worth learning about if you're going to discuss people like Musk

#89
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#90
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Caesura109 posted:

Are there any interesting writings on it you recommend?



http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRR18_Report.pdf

Here is the global risk report 2018 from world economic forum. Many of the topics and particularly the discourse around them will percolate through corporate and government departments.

#91
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Caesura109 posted:

Is that an established name for it? Are there any interesting writings on it you recommend?



"catastrophic risk" is its established name and it's considered a legitimate academic field instead of a gang of scammers because capitalism is garbage, and everything that comes out of it has the same problem. Gssh's link will give you a good idea.

The main guys in it in the public eye, besides suits like Musk, are Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky. As goatstein enjoyed pointing out during the last conversation on the topic on this forum, Yudkowsky is pretty big into posting about My Little Pony on Facebook, if that gives you some idea of the caliber of superstar thinker here.

#92
UNUSUALY COOL
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#93
UNUSUALY COOL
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,,, galaxy brain,

#94
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*counterstrike announcer voice* capitalists win
#95
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love it when thise guys bundle up the risk of their uber driver ignoring established propery law with the risk of a demonic invasion through the mars delta lab in the same report
#96
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The best Yudkowsky story is how someone’s random forum shit post gave him nightmares about the I have no mouth and must scream computer going back in time to kill him and everyone was like oh wow, what a tremendous philosopher!
#97
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cars posted:

Eliezer Yudkowsky.



lol, i used to lurk lw/ob yeaaars ago. i wouldn't pay much mind to him tbh, yudkowsky is to futures studies as brown moses is to forensics.

while the field is blinded by bourgeois garbage as cars pointed out, there is a considerable amount of resources and clever people dedicated to futures studies/risk management/etc; in my opinion the predictions/analysis from their research are worth investigating if only because they are often self-fulfilling as resulting policies are adopted by governments and corporations globally. i had the misfortune of spending time in some of these contexts, which has led me to become unproductively preoccupied with the topic... so i could be wrong

#98
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yeah but like, and i'm speaking as someone with more than a passing knowledge of the field, the fact that he's the Brown Moses equivalent of that tiny area of it, and the attention paid to that tiny portion of risk, more say some depressing things about Brown Moses and his relation to the ruling class atm than they do about Yudkowsky having a low station. and idk, when you grab a grad-level reader on forensics, is Brown Moses in it? Yudkowsky's found in the equivalent for what he does, because it's clown country right now.

risk management is imo something a lot more people on the left should know a lot more about, but "catastrophic risk" studies, etc. under capitalism are a fucked-up joke with a ridiculously high profile, and they're a scam because capitalism simply cannot plan for the sort of risks being discussed but people understand the urgency behind the premise and want to do something about it. But since Hawking passed, nearly everyone with a high profile talking about that one area, in the West or elsewhere, is either a "tech" Democrat-style start-up suit or a wanna-be "tech" Internet-circa-1998 libertarian lectern-hugger.
#99
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tears posted:

Synergy posted:

it's hard for me to imagine a violent revolution unless poverty were to skyrocket in a very short period of time. like maybe during an energy crisis? in that event i think the culture shift would be radical enough that you wouldn't be seeing too much liberal nonsense floating around. otherwise, with slow degradation, it would definitely be a non-violent revolution through green-party elections or a bernie sanders style mild reform in which case yeah you'd probably have liberals rallying with cops and juggalos

what



i'm saying that the spoils of imperialism keep the American public largely passive enough during minor inconveniences to not revolt. and the massive propaganda machine would continue to ensure that any future "revolutions" would be through the ballot box instead of in the streets. however, if say the U.S. were to run out of easily accessible oil due to war or a natural decline and did not prepare fast enough for a transition then everything would grind to a halt and the conditions for a real revolution would be present

#100
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it's staggering just how much ordinary daily life in the west is dependent on pillaging the third world, not just in abstract economic figures of wealth, but in simple goods that are the bedrock of people's everyday lives. coffee, tea, chocolate, fruit. sugar. clothing. leftists sometimes bemoan the alleged impossibility of revolution in the west because people will enthusiastically butcher innocents to protect their god-given right to drink soda, but that sword cuts both ways. we get hackneyed propaganda about cuba and venezuela lacking petty items of american life because that's what really scares people!
#101
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#102
Poronto
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Caesura109 posted:

I still have no clue what less wrong and SSC are for, my impress Is that they are forums for techies to discuss neo-phrenology and the singularity or whatever



imagine this kind of wide-eyed shitposting but embedded in a baroque discursive framework devised to diagnose exactly what kinds of cognitive deficits and epistemological sloppiness normal people who think you're dumb and wrong are suffering from, so you can avoid them too

#103
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#104
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Synergy posted:

tears posted:

Synergy posted:

it's hard for me to imagine a violent revolution unless poverty were to skyrocket in a very short period of time. like maybe during an energy crisis? in that event i think the culture shift would be radical enough that you wouldn't be seeing too much liberal nonsense floating around. otherwise, with slow degradation, it would definitely be a non-violent revolution through green-party elections or a bernie sanders style mild reform in which case yeah you'd probably have liberals rallying with cops and juggalos

what

i'm saying that the spoils of imperialism keep the American public largely passive enough during minor inconveniences to not revolt. and the massive propaganda machine would continue to ensure that any future "revolutions" would be through the ballot box instead of in the streets. however, if say the U.S. were to run out of easily accessible oil due to war or a natural decline and did not prepare fast enough for a transition then everything would grind to a halt and the conditions for a real revolution would be present


Yes, imperialist super profits keep many in the imperialist core as passive parasites with globally superior living standards which works to stave off revolution in the imperilist countries by binding them to bourgioise interests, i doubt anyone would disagree with this, its a key part of understanding the world we live in today. And yes, large shocks have the potential to spark large spontanious actions, but whAt you seem to be advocating is something i see quite alot in those who have an understanding of parasitism but struggle to see any way to act within that framework, this takes lots of differnt forms, all of which are imo a reaction to the understandable depression which a correct economic analysis of imperialism brings. Some say that we've all just got to wait and pray that someone blows up the oil or new york gets flattened by a tidal wave or something and that will spontaniously bring the revolution in the core. Or, for others, the LLCO style MTWism that says we should all sit back and wait for revolutions in the periphery. Or the neo-dengists that claim we just have to wait for socialist china to defeat the usa in there one belt one road inititive, thus ushering a new era of peace with chinese charecteristics. I disagree with all these, with substituting wishful thinking of warious sorts for real analysis of conditions, and with organisations and people using the lack of conditions for full communist revolution as an excuse for not doing anything now, because when those conditions do come about then the organisations which claim to have some superior knowledge granting them the authority to "lead teh revoloption" are completly unequiped to do anything - they have no base in the masses and they have no practical experience, they are fundimentally useless.

a wise man once said

Stalin posted:

Theoreticians and leaders of parties who know the history of nations, who have studied the history of revolutions from beginning to end, are sometimes afflicted with an unpleasant disease. This disease is known as fear of the masses, lack of confidence in the creative ability of the masses. Sometimes on this ground a certain aristocratic pose is displayed by leaders towards the masses who, although not versed in the history of revolutions, are destined to break up the old and build the new. The fear that the elements may break forth, that the masses may ‘break up too much,’ the desire to play the role of nurses who try to teach the masses from books but who refuse to learn from the masses—such is this sort of aristocracy



And further to this i am sceptical that worsening living conditions for the parasites of the core, the settler-colonists, the administrators of empire etc will result in them becoming "revolutionary" as a mass, throwing their lot in with the proletariat rather than embracing fascism, which they appear to be doing right now

#105
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Petrol posted:

imagining what it would be like to be about 20 in this dystopian age of ubiquitous forced public performance of identity via social media and realising that attempts to control or shape reality by regulating language along ideological lines are not really the greatest fodder for humour, but lolling anyway because the world is a vampire


I have no idea what's going on here but I think it proves your point: http://rosemarygrateful.tumblr.com/post/172631992779/a-big-callout

Edited by animedad ()

#106
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animedad posted:

Petrol posted:
imagining what it would be like to be about 20 in this dystopian age of ubiquitous forced public performance of identity via social media and realising that attempts to control or shape reality by regulating language along ideological lines are not really the greatest fodder for humour, but lolling anyway because the world is a vampire


I have no idea what's going on here but I think it proves your point: http://rosemarygrateful.tumblr.com/post/172631992779/a-big-callout

Edited by animedad (today 22:56:12)



What am I looking at here? what is an 'anti'?

#107
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tears posted:

And further to this i am sceptical that worsening living conditions for the parasites of the core, the settler-colonists, the administrators of empire etc will result in them becoming "revolutionary" as a mass, throwing their lot in with the proletariat rather than embracing fascism, which they appear to be doing right now


this was my initial reaction as well but on further contemplation i figured a more advanced/full/outright stage of US fascism would be short and be followed by a collapse. Nazi Germany sustained itself for years by looting its neighbors and its ethnic minorities, but in the case of the US? those resources aren't exactly untapped

#108
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unless they just send white libs to the camps, i guess
#109
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although even that redeems the original preposition, maybe: the list of things that could cure the US of settler-colonialism and thus create the conditions for non-JDPON revolution is not long but "weaponizing settler logic against a large group of whites" just might be on it
#110
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Belphegor posted:

What am I looking at here? what is an 'anti'?


#111
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I don’t know I think full fascism in the US would necessarily be accompanied by intense wide scale exterminism, and this could sustain itself quite a while. I think it’s a bit too simple and shallow to simply say that the US is already fascist but certainly I think the last several decades have been a long slow and brutal reaction, and the coming ecological collapse could easily solidify fascism. In that case it would the oppressed classes who would suffer and be destroyed by climate related disasters and deprivation, while the ruling class and pockets of petty boug settlers would consolidate their remaining resources. That’s why the MTW quietism is so pernicious, imo, because socialists need to fight reaction at all costs. Capitalism is guaranteed to collapse but it’s not guaranteed that sociliasim will follow. It could end up as something worse.
#112
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i'm not a noodle shipper myself but i'm horrified at what the antis have been doing to the 2nu community and i'm sure damon would be too.
#113
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#114
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Dauve is trash, hilarious that he would claim that real communists are linked with the masses while never having influence over more than 10 people, all of whom were artists or academics. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel since we're discussing the fundamental relationship between the world system and communist politics, which for the first time in human history involves all of humanity, not the thoughts of a "post-situationist" on libcom
#115
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idk much about this dauve character but that kind of read like an undergraduate cultural studies essay, so
#116
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I keep misreading the title of this thread as "imagining the left in this country and actually violently loling" which actually works just fine.
#117
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animeprole: "we need the masses"
animedauve: "no, we definitely do not need the masses"'
antis: "I'm 15"
#118
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#119
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#120
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