Urbandale posted:

how did you get to be so terribly smug but unintelligent nofreewill

very carefully

swampman posted:

c_man posted:

im white, ethnically, but i'm also white-as-pejorative

and as in the kind of noise generated by your posting

sounds like communism is kind of white noise politics these days

walkinginonit posted:

I'm wrapping up right now. You may be thinking "What does walkinginonit define as humanity's common interest?" I think, given the faulty nature of rationality, common interest is something that can only be determined socially.

I really hope this cleared things up, thanks for reading.

that was a lot of words to say you don't know. also if there's no moral argument for communism how do you expect people to join the cause...

Hey Lykourgos, sorry I took a little longer to respond then I said I would.

The second apology: sorry for not being as concise as I could have been. So I'll just get right to what I directly mean, since your biggest problem is that I wasn't being clear enough. So, before I go through any particular points that you made, I will just give you my definition of morality. I define morality as the dominant set of social norms. Like I mentioned before, the fact that it comes from the term "mores" (customs) means that morality has a social character.

There’s no need for an apology; you’re not on a schedule, and you’re doing better than every other communist here. At least you're willing to stand up for communism and try to put forward a coherent account of communist morality.

Yet, the above quote misses the point. I’m not asking for your definition of the word “morality” itself, I’m asking for you to explain the moral foundations of communism. The fundamental system that allows you to draw conclusions about right and wrong, good and evil, what ought to be.

When you say, “I define morality as the dominant set of social norms”, you don’t give us an account of the first principles of this moral system. What is the foundation that causes you to conclude that “the dominant set of social norms” is the standard for determining right from wrong? For example, one might say, “God, who is all powerful, made it so that the dominant set of social norms is what ought to be obeyed”. I could then see your first principles (god is, god is all powerful), see how “the dominant set of social norms” became the moral law (god made it so that they ought to be obeyed), and then we could get to work on giving a practical account of the rules and draw conclusions. I would reject your position, but you would be answering the question.

Or, perhaps you are saying that the system does not exist at all, nothing is actually good or evil, and that you only use the word “morality” to refer to the rules that humans tend to expect everyone to follow. When you say that something is “good”, you just mean that it is in accordance with the expected behaviour (the student obeys the teacher). There is no moral judgment actually involved, nothing is better or worse, nothing ought to be, and the rules themselves have no value.

The other possibility is that you are saying, “the dominant set of social norms determines good and evil”. You would be saying that this law is the first principle, and that it exists like gravity exists. Then, you would explain how morality is changed when humans get together and decide on other social norms, how morality can be different between one group and another, how to determine social norms, etc. Again, I would argue against such a position, but it would answer the question.


I don’t know which one you mean, or perhaps you mean something entirely different. As it is, you are still giving me conclusions without the work. As far as I know, there aren't any communist texts that provide a basis for moral conclusions. That’s why it is so odd that communists are eager to make moral pronouncements about everything under the sun.

Every infringement of a morality I can think of has to deal with one person infringing upon one another I (violence, sexual conduct etc.) Even archaic moral rules that seem only to do with the self, like say forbidding masturbation, has to do with ones relationship with God.

My first premise is that morality is the structure that defines what is acceptable within a social context.

Because morality deals with social relations it something that agreed upon via consensus. Obviously, people disagree with a given consensus all of the time, no consensus is every really total but merely what is socially agreed to be acceptable ground rules. People may have a many different reasons to reject the same moral guidelines for different reasons, for instance a Christian Libertarian and Atheist Liberal may unite to legalize gay marriage, but they have contradictory worldviews. But still they are somewhat capable of agreeing on a moral consensus.

While we consider that morality is the product of consensus, keep in mind human irrationality. I think everyday experience shows that an individual's "moral code" has an underlying psychological ulterior motive. There are tons of classic stereotypes of people with perverted psychologies (The bully with low self esteem etc) but what makes them relevant here is the minds huge capacity for creating a "rational" self interest out of an unspoken ulterior motive.

Now lets introduce social tension into the idea of morality being social structure. Keeping in mind the human brains capacity for having ulterior motives it is to be expected that people of the same social class are likely to come to the same moral conclusions, though their individual reasoning may differ. The point is they are aware, at some level, of sharing a common interest within the bounds of their class.

But of course, different classes conflicting interests and will thus arrive towards different moral conclusions. Let me just emphasize that I am focusing on moral conclusions here because I see moral individual reasoning capable of an infinite number of rationalizations, but when human beings interact socially they will put their philosophical quibbling aside and set towards a common goal. The world simply moves too fast for constant Socratic dialogues.

I kept this because I didn't want to just discard a large chunk of your post. Yet, I don't see the point in responding to it because the above quote puts the cart before the horse. We can’t effectively discuss infringements until we have the standard. Until communists have a foundation, it seems odd for them to honestly say anything is good or bad.

I want to wrap this up, but I'm briefly going to re-iterate my formula for morality and then briefly apply it to Communism:

-Morality is a set of social regulations

-Morality is determined by social consensus

-Moral consensus exists in the form of compromise because total agreement is not possible

-In class society, classes have contradictory interests. On aggregate, they will form their own moral consensus. Their own definition of acceptable social relations.

-Because of social tension society reorganizes itself, and thus has the moral consensus reorganize itself.

-Eliminating the tensions between between classes (ie seeking to abolish class society) allows humanity to follow its common interest.

I'm wrapping up right now. You may be thinking "What does walkinginonit define as humanity's common interest?" I think, given the faulty nature of rationality, common interest is something that can only be determined socially.

I really hope this cleared things up, thanks for reading.

It didn’t clear anything up, but I am still happy that at least one communist is willing to try laying a foundation for his or her moral judgments.

NoFreeWill posted:

if there's no moral argument for communism how do you expect people to join the cause...

getting me salty

Lykourgos posted:

slothrap posted:
NoFreeWill if you actually want people in a marxist forum to engage with your arguments you should probably provide some evidence that revolutionary change is brought about through moral arguments rather than material circumstances. I should warn you however that its not.


NoFreeWill is pointing out a problem, and if you just brush him aside then you are only a communist because you are unwilling to personally exercise reason.

Every time you say that revolutionary change ought to occur, you assume a framework that supports that conclusion. If you refuse to ever examine that framework, then you are willfully dishonest because you really don't know what you ought to do. At best, perhaps you have faith in a teacher who is better than you and shared the conclusion with you, in which case please provide us with this teacher's moral lessons so that we may learn about the moral foundations of communism.

square blocks cant solve circular problems, to phrase my response appropriately greek

NoFreeWill posted:

Urbandale posted:
for example: we can easily imagine a communist becoming such through class pressures, and only then does a personal morality come into play. this isnt to say that you cant recruit people along moral lines, merely that i see absolutely no reason why it should be or is a prerequisite


so we should leave the construction of socialism up to the proletarians and do everything in our power to oppress them, since it's in our class interests.

what. is your point that this is a logic of the bourgeoisie or something?

swirlsofhistory posted:

ITT communists getting burnt like they're trapped in a Mariupol trade union hall

I understand the separatists to be orthodox christians, so they actually have some understanding of a moral system. If they're communist, it's a policy within an overall system that they would like to see. That's fine by me, as long as communism is trimmed down to size and put in its place in the greater scheme of society.

I'm concerned about communists who don't appear to have any other titles, like christian, platonist, etc, and think that communism is wholly sufficient to encompass and handle everything. If they want to throw out the church, then replace it with something that still lets you talk about what we ought to do.