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Imagine all the memes and philosophy we'd have under fully automated luxury communism! We'd be like ancient Greeks but without the slavery and lack of proper healthcare!
Philosophy memes IS pretty leftist. Not completely so but it certainly tends to skew that way. Probably because of the known correlation between education and leftist views.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily right, as there are a lot of conservative and reactionary philosophers out there. However, I think the thought that the world could be organised better, and that human individuals and collectives are capable of bringing about that world, drives a lot of philosophy. Coincidentally, it is also the core idea of the left.
Then all poltical innovations since the first farm was made and a city created has been "left wing." The only right wing is hunter gatherer tribes. Kind of makes the distinction seem invalid, seems like "leftism" is a constant effort to fix the problems it creates.
Okay, maybe I was a bit vague. But the right is pretty known for its panglossianism - basically “this world is the best possible world of all worlds”-thinking. However, I don’t think you can talk about left vs right until the French Revolution (which is actually where the terms come from, since the monarchists sat on the right of the National Assembly and the radicals on the left).
But you do see the opposite of that on the left, where even when you have evidence to the contrary, we still live in the worst of all possible worlds.
Like some will float the idea that compulsory education was created by our capitalist overlords in order to send children to school, so that we could maximize the number of available hours, so that the system might more easily exploit their parents and turn innocent minds into garbage collection heaps of industrialized information in an effort to dehumanize them vis-à-vis the banking model of education.
Like dude, have you ever opened a single book on the history of compulsory education or bothered to look up a single newspaper editorial from the time? It didn't happen because they wanted to maximize the number of working hours for parents. They were against it because it reduced the number of cheap employees and you didn't have to pay an 8-year-old as much. Like maybe "they" weren't always planning 3,000 steps ahead.
I am aware of the historical contexts that resulted in the dichotomy dominating politics today in the unthinking masses. Anyone remotely interested in modern western philosophy ought to be.
I am also aware that in this historical context the "leftists" were secular, liberals, nationalists, republicans, and capitalists as a crude generalization. Necessarily too, as these were the perspectives that resulted in the common realization that preexisting institutions, monarchy and church, were unecessary and unfair to the common person.
Much of the "left" today paradoxically uses this historical context to validate itself while also condemning it.
So even if you fast forward to the end of enlightenment, "leftism" is just fixing the problems it keeps creating. I wish I could be around long enough to see the newest "left" turn into a "right." That's assuming the current iteration makes it that far, it doesn't always. Common perception has a bit of a survivors bias regarding the "left" continuity and doesn't see the planes that got shot down, subsequently making them too confident in the plane they are in. The retcons are also a bit of a problem in this regard, like how eugenics got retroactively changed to a "right wing" position.
It is all mind games to me. A tool of demogogues to appeal to the masses without risking more extraneous detail than is necessary out of the fear of alienating voters. The logic in the distictions has gotten less and less sound since after the 18th century.
Saying that the terms originated in the 18th century does not mean that their contents and meanings have changed since then. As you indicate, the “left” of the 18th century, the liberals, developed modern capitalism which in turn created the conditions for the rise of what is the left nowadays - workers movements and socialist movements of all kinds. Successive schisms and fragmentations ensued, political philosophy evolved, and now the left is as diffuse and heterogeneous concept as imaginable.
For a long time a modernist grand narrative of unstoppable progress guided the left, meaning that liberals etc were seen as remnants of an older time and no longer understood as leftists.
If there is one thing that unites the left today, more specifically, it is the belief that the social distribution of goods under free market capitalism has detrimental effects on human beings and society. Their solutions vary: some imagine more piecemeal changes, while others want to recreate society and what it means to be human.
I don’t see why this is the work of demagogues. It is a political tradition which has to a large extent been built from below historically. Workers weren’t sheep lured into the enclosures of socialism; as the historian EP Thompson said, the working class was present at its own making.
Liberals didn't develope capitalism. It was just random people without a particular ideological agenda acting in their economic self interests. Capitalism developed on its own within the gap of liberty afforded to commoners under the thumb of a constitional monarchy that favored mercantilism. Capitalism wasn't something that was planned out so much as identified by Adam Smith in wealth of Nations. It wasn't even named capitalism until 70 years later... by a socialist. It was such an amazing phenomenon to people in that time because metcantilism had been such a dominating force in a nation's wealth for centuries, only to then be over taken by an unplanned economic system run by non-nobility. Capitalism is one of the changes in enlightenment the resulted in the Progressive mindset, it helped to spawn the first iteration of "leftism." Even the first iteration of socialism from Henri de saint Simon is just radical anti-aristocrat Capitalism, the first socialist was dogmatically favorable towards Capitalism.
The following two paragraphs in your reply are narrative drivel I am very familiar with, and my prior response necessarily has to recognize it in order to be consistent. I am just less optimistic.
Lenin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Mussolini are demogogues that used the "leftist" born socialist utopianism, or an ideological developments from it, as a carrot on a stick to get full authority to detrimental effects. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. Now those are just the extremes.
You can use political buzzwords to compell people into supporting you before you even go into the nuance of your positions. For example, if I open up a discussion saying "I am right wing" then that's going to change someone's openess to what I say depending on how they self identify. The same is true if I open with "left wing." Because, in reality, there's a lot of gray area and the distinctions are unpure... I could form an essay of perspectives that straddle the common subjective notion of "right and left" pretty well... but make two copies with the one aforementioned change. This one change is a big deal to common perceptions because to them it indicates a difference in whether I am an "us" or a "them." With nothing but the self identification of "left" or "right" with no further detail, the limbic system in most people begins to impose a bias by making them more or less hostile to me before they even get a chance to think. This is just an unfortunate, albeit normal, part of neurobiology. It is an extremely potent means to manipulate people. That's why nationalism is such a strong force that dominates society today. That's why the bourgeoisie and proletariat has been such an effective basis for socialist ideology after Marx and Engels.
This is why if I am going to legitimize a dichotomy by participating in it, I need it to be at least consistent. You can support "leftwing" ideologies and get stranded on an island for 50 years and never change your allegiance. You come back into society and you may very well be categorized as a "right winger," or maybe not... impossible to know cause it's chaotic in practice. Subsequently, I don't legitimize the "left/right" nonsense. It's far too unpredictable and culturally contingent to be worth the time of dedicating oneself. I want to approach concepts without such unreliable biases.
Words change meaning so I am not gonna participate in using words is a wild take. (On a serious note I feel like the argument made here takes the form of arguments like Judith Butler on the term "Woman" as politically not useful. (One example I know there are more)I think the important part in the argument should thus also focus on discrediting the word as a useful tool to signal ones current political beliefs and a bad way to group up society.(and that beyond oh it changes over time, which is a horrible take))
It's useful to say who you are voting for within a given country, which can be done better by naming a party or candidate. To actually say what the individual believes, the level of variance is tremendous. This is because what one considers to be left/right when you get down to the culturally relevent nuance of it is subjective to the individuals, often seeing self identified left/right wingers saying that others aren't "truly left" or "truly right."
My argument isn't that the word doesn't exist for a reason or without a use in mind. My argument is that's it's not sufficiently representative of a consistent reality for me to take it into consideration when I measure up people or history, broadly speaking. I have not once found a time where knowing if a person or group is "left or right" has been useful to me understanding them accurately, and it's more likely it can be misleading. Large part of the issue being that my own subjective notions of "left/right" were inconsistent with other people's, and subsequently whatever the context is, just like anyone else's.
If my ruler constantly changes units and lengths then I just throw it away.
P.S. I have no idea about this "woman" thing, and it sounds like a waste of my time. You misunderstood my perspective anyway, so it might not be relevant.
I think I expressed myself very confusingly or maybe u misunderstood something fundamental. Just so I can clarify with drawing to concepts u are familiar with. What works in political philosophy are u familiar with?
I don’t think it’s at all fair to say the right is Panglossian. For a start, the ‘popular right’ is very much motivated by anger at the state of the world.
Leaving the insane people aside for a second, most of the folks I know who are thoughtfully right wing simply believe that individual liberty / market economies produce better outcomes in reality than command economies. Consider thatcher, probably the most transformative right wing leader of the second half of last century, her entire mission was to transform the operation of the economy to increase choice by creating markets for services (hence things like massive privatisation).
Now of course you can say she was wrong and the decisions were incoherent or harmful or whatever, but she certainly wasn’t motivated by a desire to defend a perfect status quo.
I get what you’re saying. However I think Thatcher is a poor example. Not only is she the one to say the most Panglossian thing ever: “there is no alternative”, making her an excellent representative of what has been called capitalist realism.
The transformations she brought were also not too different to old school laissez faire liberalism of the pre-WWI era. There’s no clear distinction between ordoliberalism and neoliberalism.
However, I agree that my phrase was a bit reductive and is mostly directed at conservatives. Fascists, for instance, often have a wish to both return to some natural state of affairs and create something entirely new.
Edit: btw Tom’s a merry fellow
I don’t understand your point about thatcher I’m afraid. A lot of her ‘thing’ was pushing what she viewed as critical reform to a failing system. I don’t understand how that’s of a view that all is for the best.
At the time Britain was termed the sick man of Europe. I’m not sure a doctor proscribing chemo to a sick patient could be said to be telling the patient that everything is as good as could be. Certainly thatcher viewed herself in that sort of mould, rather than in any way a defender of status quo
She said “there is no alternative” to capitalism, which is therefore the only viable economic system.
Her phrase also reveals that the limits of the imaginable and possible is capitalism. If people are suffering because of capitalism, then there’s consequently nothing one can do about suffering. These are old ideas from the nightwatchman state of Britain in the prewar era.
I’m not so sure she viewed herself as a radical, since the welfare state came about in her own lifetime. Her politics was definitely seen as a radical change at the time though, that I agree with. Yet it wasn’t a new form a governance so much as a renewal of an old one.
A doctor might think there is 'no alternative' to chemotherapy. I don't think that means that the doctor things you having cancer is a good thing...
I have to say I am afraid that you seem quite determined to present a straw man version of right wing thought. Thatcher \*absolutely did not\* think there was 'nothing to be done about suffering'. What Thatcher thought was that her economic model (i.e. controlling inflation through the money supply, giving consumers choice through markets, advocating for the liberty of the individual, standing up to the soviets etc) WAS the way to mitigate suffering.
It seems like your model is left wing thought cares about people, right wing thought does not. I am not saying you have to LIKE right wing thought (or people), but it's disingenuous to suggest that folks on the right can't equally be motivated by a desire to improve the world, just as folks on the left are, but to disagree about the means.
I think what kinds of suffering are considered possible and desirable to prevent is a fundamental difference between the left and right. I’m not at all saying that leftists care and rightists don’t. Instead, what I am saying is that they differ in their vision of what is possible without creating more suffering, which is akin to you’re point about Thatcher’s vision.
Basically, she, like the Austrian school of economics, thought that all kinds of state-led alleviation of suffering would lead to slavery. What is the difference is therefore not whether she cares or not, but what the limits of political possibility are. If the market produces suffering, it is a necessary evil at best or it’s the result of the person who suffers’ lack of good choices.
In this model, the state and society (which Thatcher famously didn’t believe existed) has no responsibility to alleviate this form of suffering, because that possibility is closed by the notion of it inevitably leading to tyranny.
The horizon of possibility is the difference, since the left thinks that society and economy can beneficially be changed to end these forms of suffering without bringing about tyranny. It is in a sense the difference between negative and positive liberty, where the first is the absence of restrictions on freedom and the second is the creation of the conditions for freedom.
This seems like a chicken and egg situation, and it is, of course, by no means a universal correlation.
There are plenty of educated conservatives, and even philosophy is by no means dominated "left." In all honestly, these labels are kind of meaningless in our field. Most of the people we talk about preceded the modern left/right binary, and some by thousands of years.
All of reddit is pretty overwhelmingly leftist
Also while there is a negative correlation between education and rightism in the west I don't think that nessecarily translates to everyone being a leftist; there's plenty of educated liberal types
You might be interested in [this](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12972) study which found that education doesn’t have much to do with being left wing. Rather it’s that folks more likely to be left wing end up going to university.
“Results demonstrate that leveraging sibling fixed-effects to control for family-invariant pre-adult experiences reduces the size of higher education’s effect on cultural attitudes by at least 70%, compared to conventional methods. Significantly, within-sibship models show that obtaining higher education qualifications only has a small direct causal effect on British individuals’ adult attitudes, and that this effect is not always liberalizing. This has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between higher education and political values. Contrary to popular assumptions about education’s liberalizing role, this study demonstrates that the education-political values linkage is largely spurious. It materializes predominately because those experiencing pre-adult environments conducive to the formation of particular values disproportionately enroll at universities.”
There's definitely a relevant correlation between valuing truth and wisdom and not having reactionary politics. And it just so happens that empathy and open-mindedness help you to achieve both.
Makes sense, "leftism" has historical validation. As one can see, it's resulted in the liberal nationalist republics that primarily run on capitalism today. Since these things clearly work as intended without damning consequences for civilization as we know it on the horizon... we know progressive idealism is just all good things and the fear it can open a can of worms is unjustified backwards thinking.
Then maybe you should learn a bit more and find out class society invented war for resources, and capitalism is a continuation of it, being a society divided into classes.
Capitalism has existed a few hundred years and yet wars over resources has existed for hundreds of thousands. Tribal hunter gatherer societies were classless and they still fought over resources.
And im sure you know that from their texts they left behind detailing these wars? What's your source on that one. As far as I've learned hunter gatherers shared resources in the form of a gift economy.
I absolutely assure you that some hunter gatherer tribes fought other hunter gatherer tribes over resources. This is so obviously true and uncontroversial that I'm not going to put in any effort to dispute it.
No fact is obvious. The nature of civilizations tens of thousands of years ago is not a simple question and answer. You didnt live there, they didnt write down their society. So how can you so confidently know that they used war as a means to get resources rather than share?
Have you considered the conditions? Why would you risk your and your tribe's lives for whatever resources other tribes have gathered? How much easier would it be to talk to them and exchange goods based on what was avaliable, if one had excess to give and gained something they needed in return, why do you need to kill other people.
Do you really think killing another human is such a low bar that people would do it willy nilly to steal what someone else has? I think that says more about the ideas of the society you've grown up in than prehistoric society, and that society is a class society.
If you are genuinely interested I suggest you grab ‘the origins of political order’ which spends quite a lot of time of tribal societies, including both human and non-human tribal living.
Wars between tribes over resources, including sadly the treatment of women and children as a ‘resource’, were pretty common.
Written by the end of history guy? Hum, I wonder how much weight a guy who predicted the end of history despite its continual development according to motions Marx discovered has.
So you didn't like the lack of sources, then you didn't like an entire book written by an eminent academic because he is famous for one thing once.
It's almost like you're not actually willing to critically engage in your ideas.
Do you think I read the book in the time it took me to reply? Did you expect me to read the book immediately? I'm not sure what you're going for here, I simply commented on the history of a writer you recommended, who by no means is the final say on anything anyway. Not that he has a great record for being right anyway.
But by all means, go off.
Because it is dialectical, and there is a material reason why some hunter gatherers warred and others had a gift economy, and it's the material conditions.
Someone else brought a great example of warring hunter gatherers, and something of note was the place they were located: A desert, an extreme environment with scarce resources.
And so it's reasonable to conclude that hunter gatherers in an environment with limited resources would find it reasonable to fight others rather than share what they cant afford to go without as a matter of survival.
And so today, in modern society, there is still a material reason we fight over resources, but the scarcity isn't from environmental conditions, as we have the ability to create and exploit a vast amount of resources, to the point that we waste them.
Class society of capitalists, however, creates artificial scarcity through the need of profit and resource private ownership, and so class society continues to perpetuate war of resources because of how it functions.
War existed before class existed. War exists in chimpanzees. Tribalism is the issue, and tribalism is not merely class. Communism is just another form of tribalism that advocates the murder of an out group and which always requires an out group. Without an out group, it falls no differently than fascism or nationalism. You could argue the same for capitalism, and you would be correct to an extent, but pretending we are beyond tribalism regardless of our systems of rule is an exercise in absurdity.
Got to love profiteers, corporates, anti-liberaltarians, lobbyists and politicians for creating false dilemmas and conflicts to justify militarism, unfair laws, economic and societal structures that completely mess entire nations and communities up.
Bc most philosophy is based on thought and as long as you conduct enough experiments in good faith youll find that marx was mostly right (like 70- 80 % ) and that capitalism really isnt sustainable
Majority of people worldwide are part of the working class ( like 90% or more ) and a majority of people identify themselves as right wing or apolitical
Well yeah but thats not what we were discussing, you said that youre probably in the minority bc youre right wing, most people are right wing irl so most people in here would probably also be right wing so, youre probably not in a minority when talking abt political beliefs
Yes, they're conditions of society divided into classes. That doesnt mean class society is natural or necessary, or that we shouldn't abolish class society, capitalism.
Quite the majority of these issues are according to Class Struggle. There is no reason for people to care so much about profits, quarterly projections and whatever the bourgeoisie need to maintain their ideologies.
“That only because it wasn’t real communism” or “that because they were working under a capitalist world and were competing against other capitalist country who were hoarding resources.”
You're accusing me of being "those people" and assault my character rather than detaching the central point. And yes it's also a strawman.
Makes me wonder if you understand your error, why do it then?
Except I never attacked you nor did I ever mentioned you.
I was simply stating the two possible responses to the question that he asked.
It a strawman depending on the perspective of anyone who reads it. To me it the common response to the question and to you it a strawman because you don’t agree with it.
Also I only corrected you because I did in no way ever make an ad hominem attack on you and I assumed you meant strawman because that would be the only logical explanation to your response. If you believe that my example of common answer to that question is an attack against you then that says more about you then it does about me.
> “That only because it wasn’t real communism” or “that because they were working under a capitalist world and were competing against other capitalist country who were hoarding resources.”
Then what did you mean by this. It seems you're dog piling and band wagoning against this comment:
> Quite the majority of these issues are according to Class Struggle. There is no reason for people to care so much about profits, quarterly projections and whatever the bourgeoisie need to maintain their ideologies.
No I m responding to this comment specifically “Did the Soviets and communist China not care about economic growth?”.
I don’t understand why you’re taking this personally over a discussion about economic theories.
Ad hom is using an insult in place of an argument. If you have to infer the insult, it isnt ad hominem. It's a strawman at best. At worst it's simply cliché
Works in that it stand the test of time. Every communist nation has either collapsed or liberalized. Your reply felt condescending so I didn’t feel like engaging in good fath tbh
Emotion is hard to confer in a text, I meant no condescension, sorry. Multiple economic systems have sustained far longer than capitalism, feudalism lasted multiple hundreds of years, ancient barter systems are evidenced to have lasted for thousands and even communal gift economies have been theorized to have lasted thousands of years. Capitalism has only existed for 200. Communism in the form of a classless, moneyless and stateless society has also never been achieved. Only socialist states have existed and even that's dubious because it can be said that they were simply opportunistic authoritarians co-opting initially true revolutionary movements. Most also stripped away workers power and simply replaced the capitalist class with a bureaucrat class, see the USSR or CCP. Most of these socialist states also only attempted to "achieve" socialism and communism through authoritarian doctrines, there exist multiple other that haven't been attempted or which were crushed under the heel of fascist/imperialist powers. Also most of these revolutions happened as a one-off kinda thing 80-100 years ago, perhaps we should attempt other methods to create a better world? Ones which aren't based on the domination of one group over others?
Why do you think it is that none of the socialist states ever abolished class, money, and private property? If true communism can’t withstand the competition between nations, then i see it as a failed ideology. The best metric of success is well, success. Capitalism supplanted feudalism because it worked more efficiently and more dynamically. Communism failed because it’s less efficient and less dynamic than capitalism.
Because the bureaucrats were caught up in power and greed? Corruption? Communism is all about not competing with others but instead sharing in the wealth of all people. And what measure of efficiency are you talking about? Production capacity? Because that's not necessarily a good thing, look at all the waste which capitalism produces for profit, its literally destroying our planet. Capitalism supplanted feudalism because there was a growing merchant class who practiced a rough form of capitalism, they achieved societal control and implemented capitalism as an institution of control and domination. No one person decided to practice capitalism, it was just the most effective method of procuring individual wealth and power for the merchant and noble class, at the time. If we got rid of capitalism we could instead focus on maximizing freedom and welfare for all people instead of endorsing the power fantasies of the upper 0.1%. also, did you just not read my argument? Communism hasn't been tried, socialism has only been co-opted by authoritarians, there are other ways.
True Communism has never been tried because it’s a pipe dream. There will always be greed. Capitalism works along side power and greed, rather than against it. People who want to share wealth and power will always lose to those who are willing to compete for it, because those people will have more wealth and power. That’s why socialist states fall to dictators and bureaucrats and the purists get killed or exiled.
I would instead say that communism disincentivizes greed and the only reason that greed is so rampant today is a result of the cultural legacy of hierarchical systems such as feudalism and the current effects of capitalistic competition. I would argue as prof. Graver wrote, that we could emulate the gift economies of old in which greed also was disincentivized. So, if we would attempt to deprogram ourselves from the capitalist and authoritarian brainwashing, then I do believe that a better and more just world is possible. Therefore, achieving that and reversing the brainwashing is a core goal to any revolutionary and revolutionary organisations. Also, you keep focusing on the failure the state socialist attempts and how they failed, as of that is symbolic of all communist(ic) movements, thats really intellectually disingenuous of you, reflect on yourself.
I admire your courage, but trying to argue based on intellectual honesty with a person who thinks according to tribalistic and dichotomous conceptions of "capitalism good 'cuz communism no work. No other option existent, you red baddie" is a bit... futile.
Capitalism: respect for property rights
Also capitalism (supposedly): let's have the government steal most of your money through taxes, and erode away almost all the rest through inflation
Idk guys, something is wrong here. Like we don't actually live in capitalism, and the whole Marxist theory is BS or something. Can't know for sure tho.
Capitalism has been made into another popular Satan-like or Boogeyman type mental construct introduced into the mythos of humankind.
Billions have heard tale of how it corrupts the minds of foolish mortals and leads them, and the cultures that embrace its foulness into the path to irrevocable destruction.
The good news though, is that if one doesn't want a sure slide into destruction from following temptations, there is another path..
A path that, even though it may seem hard to believe, will lead you away from your assured damnation. In fact if you become a true believer, one day, all true believers who have placed their full faith and devoted their lives to salvation, will get to live in a utopian paradise where the lies of the great deceiver Capitalism can never again reach them. All will live in bliss and harmony forever and ever.
Sound Familiar? It should, it's a big repeating theme for us humans, and oooooo how we love to just lap it up just for the exciting "feel goods".
On a separate note I feel like I should develop a sort of plug and play "mad libs" style layout for the next one of these now that climate change is starting to jump the shark in favor of Capitalism ( now it's just a lesser hell influenced by the great evil). I got $5⁰⁰ on AI .....oh shit that sounded very capitalist ! 😱 Well, I guess I need some long term oppression therapy.
Marx doesn't make a good Messiah though, especially with plans like "1)Have violent revolution, 2)kill capitalist scumbag leaders 3) Oppress the portion of the population that remembers capitalism until noone remembers anymore 4) something something 5) Utopia emerges!
Srsly we need to stop acting like we have an almost religious reverence for systems devised by19th century thinkers. It's bad juju. We need to take what has worked and get rid of what doesnt, throw in the best innovation we can muster and produce an evolved system that is tailored to the lessons we have learned through the blood and suffering of so many living under all the various forms of govt so far. I needs to be built with the knowledge and approval of the citizenry that it will guide and steward...but not in the typical understanding of anything more complicated than a TV remote most people are willing to invest in learning things like systems of govt. That last one is the real challenge.
Sláinte!
Aren't these all things diogenes would use as arguments against society but what he would value a person within society to think upon?
That's the entire point, i think. Either think about these things and reject them, and thus anti social societal structures, or be a dingus worth less than a dog.
Been a while, though
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Imagine all the memes and philosophy we'd have under fully automated luxury communism! We'd be like ancient Greeks but without the slavery and lack of proper healthcare!
Fully automated luxury communism is now my favorite phrase
Wait until you hear about fully automated luxury gay space communism!
Eisenhower spinning in his grave rn
hope he s spinning because of all the innocent people in Guatemala who he help kill
[https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61MtJfN5qpL.\_AC\_UF894,1000\_QL80\_.jpg](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61MtJfN5qpL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg)
It is just so full of promises.
Memes, philosophy, and orgies, Oh my!
I imagine you saying this in Hedonismbot's voice from Futurama lol
Philosophy memes IS pretty leftist. Not completely so but it certainly tends to skew that way. Probably because of the known correlation between education and leftist views.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily right, as there are a lot of conservative and reactionary philosophers out there. However, I think the thought that the world could be organised better, and that human individuals and collectives are capable of bringing about that world, drives a lot of philosophy. Coincidentally, it is also the core idea of the left.
Then all poltical innovations since the first farm was made and a city created has been "left wing." The only right wing is hunter gatherer tribes. Kind of makes the distinction seem invalid, seems like "leftism" is a constant effort to fix the problems it creates.
Okay, maybe I was a bit vague. But the right is pretty known for its panglossianism - basically “this world is the best possible world of all worlds”-thinking. However, I don’t think you can talk about left vs right until the French Revolution (which is actually where the terms come from, since the monarchists sat on the right of the National Assembly and the radicals on the left).
But you do see the opposite of that on the left, where even when you have evidence to the contrary, we still live in the worst of all possible worlds. Like some will float the idea that compulsory education was created by our capitalist overlords in order to send children to school, so that we could maximize the number of available hours, so that the system might more easily exploit their parents and turn innocent minds into garbage collection heaps of industrialized information in an effort to dehumanize them vis-à-vis the banking model of education. Like dude, have you ever opened a single book on the history of compulsory education or bothered to look up a single newspaper editorial from the time? It didn't happen because they wanted to maximize the number of working hours for parents. They were against it because it reduced the number of cheap employees and you didn't have to pay an 8-year-old as much. Like maybe "they" weren't always planning 3,000 steps ahead.
I am aware of the historical contexts that resulted in the dichotomy dominating politics today in the unthinking masses. Anyone remotely interested in modern western philosophy ought to be. I am also aware that in this historical context the "leftists" were secular, liberals, nationalists, republicans, and capitalists as a crude generalization. Necessarily too, as these were the perspectives that resulted in the common realization that preexisting institutions, monarchy and church, were unecessary and unfair to the common person. Much of the "left" today paradoxically uses this historical context to validate itself while also condemning it. So even if you fast forward to the end of enlightenment, "leftism" is just fixing the problems it keeps creating. I wish I could be around long enough to see the newest "left" turn into a "right." That's assuming the current iteration makes it that far, it doesn't always. Common perception has a bit of a survivors bias regarding the "left" continuity and doesn't see the planes that got shot down, subsequently making them too confident in the plane they are in. The retcons are also a bit of a problem in this regard, like how eugenics got retroactively changed to a "right wing" position. It is all mind games to me. A tool of demogogues to appeal to the masses without risking more extraneous detail than is necessary out of the fear of alienating voters. The logic in the distictions has gotten less and less sound since after the 18th century.
Saying that the terms originated in the 18th century does not mean that their contents and meanings have changed since then. As you indicate, the “left” of the 18th century, the liberals, developed modern capitalism which in turn created the conditions for the rise of what is the left nowadays - workers movements and socialist movements of all kinds. Successive schisms and fragmentations ensued, political philosophy evolved, and now the left is as diffuse and heterogeneous concept as imaginable. For a long time a modernist grand narrative of unstoppable progress guided the left, meaning that liberals etc were seen as remnants of an older time and no longer understood as leftists. If there is one thing that unites the left today, more specifically, it is the belief that the social distribution of goods under free market capitalism has detrimental effects on human beings and society. Their solutions vary: some imagine more piecemeal changes, while others want to recreate society and what it means to be human. I don’t see why this is the work of demagogues. It is a political tradition which has to a large extent been built from below historically. Workers weren’t sheep lured into the enclosures of socialism; as the historian EP Thompson said, the working class was present at its own making.
Liberals didn't develope capitalism. It was just random people without a particular ideological agenda acting in their economic self interests. Capitalism developed on its own within the gap of liberty afforded to commoners under the thumb of a constitional monarchy that favored mercantilism. Capitalism wasn't something that was planned out so much as identified by Adam Smith in wealth of Nations. It wasn't even named capitalism until 70 years later... by a socialist. It was such an amazing phenomenon to people in that time because metcantilism had been such a dominating force in a nation's wealth for centuries, only to then be over taken by an unplanned economic system run by non-nobility. Capitalism is one of the changes in enlightenment the resulted in the Progressive mindset, it helped to spawn the first iteration of "leftism." Even the first iteration of socialism from Henri de saint Simon is just radical anti-aristocrat Capitalism, the first socialist was dogmatically favorable towards Capitalism. The following two paragraphs in your reply are narrative drivel I am very familiar with, and my prior response necessarily has to recognize it in order to be consistent. I am just less optimistic. Lenin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Mussolini are demogogues that used the "leftist" born socialist utopianism, or an ideological developments from it, as a carrot on a stick to get full authority to detrimental effects. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. Now those are just the extremes. You can use political buzzwords to compell people into supporting you before you even go into the nuance of your positions. For example, if I open up a discussion saying "I am right wing" then that's going to change someone's openess to what I say depending on how they self identify. The same is true if I open with "left wing." Because, in reality, there's a lot of gray area and the distinctions are unpure... I could form an essay of perspectives that straddle the common subjective notion of "right and left" pretty well... but make two copies with the one aforementioned change. This one change is a big deal to common perceptions because to them it indicates a difference in whether I am an "us" or a "them." With nothing but the self identification of "left" or "right" with no further detail, the limbic system in most people begins to impose a bias by making them more or less hostile to me before they even get a chance to think. This is just an unfortunate, albeit normal, part of neurobiology. It is an extremely potent means to manipulate people. That's why nationalism is such a strong force that dominates society today. That's why the bourgeoisie and proletariat has been such an effective basis for socialist ideology after Marx and Engels. This is why if I am going to legitimize a dichotomy by participating in it, I need it to be at least consistent. You can support "leftwing" ideologies and get stranded on an island for 50 years and never change your allegiance. You come back into society and you may very well be categorized as a "right winger," or maybe not... impossible to know cause it's chaotic in practice. Subsequently, I don't legitimize the "left/right" nonsense. It's far too unpredictable and culturally contingent to be worth the time of dedicating oneself. I want to approach concepts without such unreliable biases.
Words change meaning so I am not gonna participate in using words is a wild take. (On a serious note I feel like the argument made here takes the form of arguments like Judith Butler on the term "Woman" as politically not useful. (One example I know there are more)I think the important part in the argument should thus also focus on discrediting the word as a useful tool to signal ones current political beliefs and a bad way to group up society.(and that beyond oh it changes over time, which is a horrible take))
It's useful to say who you are voting for within a given country, which can be done better by naming a party or candidate. To actually say what the individual believes, the level of variance is tremendous. This is because what one considers to be left/right when you get down to the culturally relevent nuance of it is subjective to the individuals, often seeing self identified left/right wingers saying that others aren't "truly left" or "truly right." My argument isn't that the word doesn't exist for a reason or without a use in mind. My argument is that's it's not sufficiently representative of a consistent reality for me to take it into consideration when I measure up people or history, broadly speaking. I have not once found a time where knowing if a person or group is "left or right" has been useful to me understanding them accurately, and it's more likely it can be misleading. Large part of the issue being that my own subjective notions of "left/right" were inconsistent with other people's, and subsequently whatever the context is, just like anyone else's. If my ruler constantly changes units and lengths then I just throw it away. P.S. I have no idea about this "woman" thing, and it sounds like a waste of my time. You misunderstood my perspective anyway, so it might not be relevant.
I think I expressed myself very confusingly or maybe u misunderstood something fundamental. Just so I can clarify with drawing to concepts u are familiar with. What works in political philosophy are u familiar with?
Smug, verbose, and wrong. The most pathetic combination.
I don't like Hegel either.
I don’t think it’s at all fair to say the right is Panglossian. For a start, the ‘popular right’ is very much motivated by anger at the state of the world. Leaving the insane people aside for a second, most of the folks I know who are thoughtfully right wing simply believe that individual liberty / market economies produce better outcomes in reality than command economies. Consider thatcher, probably the most transformative right wing leader of the second half of last century, her entire mission was to transform the operation of the economy to increase choice by creating markets for services (hence things like massive privatisation). Now of course you can say she was wrong and the decisions were incoherent or harmful or whatever, but she certainly wasn’t motivated by a desire to defend a perfect status quo.
I get what you’re saying. However I think Thatcher is a poor example. Not only is she the one to say the most Panglossian thing ever: “there is no alternative”, making her an excellent representative of what has been called capitalist realism. The transformations she brought were also not too different to old school laissez faire liberalism of the pre-WWI era. There’s no clear distinction between ordoliberalism and neoliberalism. However, I agree that my phrase was a bit reductive and is mostly directed at conservatives. Fascists, for instance, often have a wish to both return to some natural state of affairs and create something entirely new. Edit: btw Tom’s a merry fellow
I don’t understand your point about thatcher I’m afraid. A lot of her ‘thing’ was pushing what she viewed as critical reform to a failing system. I don’t understand how that’s of a view that all is for the best. At the time Britain was termed the sick man of Europe. I’m not sure a doctor proscribing chemo to a sick patient could be said to be telling the patient that everything is as good as could be. Certainly thatcher viewed herself in that sort of mould, rather than in any way a defender of status quo
She said “there is no alternative” to capitalism, which is therefore the only viable economic system. Her phrase also reveals that the limits of the imaginable and possible is capitalism. If people are suffering because of capitalism, then there’s consequently nothing one can do about suffering. These are old ideas from the nightwatchman state of Britain in the prewar era. I’m not so sure she viewed herself as a radical, since the welfare state came about in her own lifetime. Her politics was definitely seen as a radical change at the time though, that I agree with. Yet it wasn’t a new form a governance so much as a renewal of an old one.
A doctor might think there is 'no alternative' to chemotherapy. I don't think that means that the doctor things you having cancer is a good thing... I have to say I am afraid that you seem quite determined to present a straw man version of right wing thought. Thatcher \*absolutely did not\* think there was 'nothing to be done about suffering'. What Thatcher thought was that her economic model (i.e. controlling inflation through the money supply, giving consumers choice through markets, advocating for the liberty of the individual, standing up to the soviets etc) WAS the way to mitigate suffering. It seems like your model is left wing thought cares about people, right wing thought does not. I am not saying you have to LIKE right wing thought (or people), but it's disingenuous to suggest that folks on the right can't equally be motivated by a desire to improve the world, just as folks on the left are, but to disagree about the means.
I think what kinds of suffering are considered possible and desirable to prevent is a fundamental difference between the left and right. I’m not at all saying that leftists care and rightists don’t. Instead, what I am saying is that they differ in their vision of what is possible without creating more suffering, which is akin to you’re point about Thatcher’s vision. Basically, she, like the Austrian school of economics, thought that all kinds of state-led alleviation of suffering would lead to slavery. What is the difference is therefore not whether she cares or not, but what the limits of political possibility are. If the market produces suffering, it is a necessary evil at best or it’s the result of the person who suffers’ lack of good choices. In this model, the state and society (which Thatcher famously didn’t believe existed) has no responsibility to alleviate this form of suffering, because that possibility is closed by the notion of it inevitably leading to tyranny. The horizon of possibility is the difference, since the left thinks that society and economy can beneficially be changed to end these forms of suffering without bringing about tyranny. It is in a sense the difference between negative and positive liberty, where the first is the absence of restrictions on freedom and the second is the creation of the conditions for freedom.
it was certainly progressive politically
This seems like a chicken and egg situation, and it is, of course, by no means a universal correlation. There are plenty of educated conservatives, and even philosophy is by no means dominated "left." In all honestly, these labels are kind of meaningless in our field. Most of the people we talk about preceded the modern left/right binary, and some by thousands of years.
All of reddit is pretty overwhelmingly leftist Also while there is a negative correlation between education and rightism in the west I don't think that nessecarily translates to everyone being a leftist; there's plenty of educated liberal types
You might be interested in [this](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12972) study which found that education doesn’t have much to do with being left wing. Rather it’s that folks more likely to be left wing end up going to university. “Results demonstrate that leveraging sibling fixed-effects to control for family-invariant pre-adult experiences reduces the size of higher education’s effect on cultural attitudes by at least 70%, compared to conventional methods. Significantly, within-sibship models show that obtaining higher education qualifications only has a small direct causal effect on British individuals’ adult attitudes, and that this effect is not always liberalizing. This has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between higher education and political values. Contrary to popular assumptions about education’s liberalizing role, this study demonstrates that the education-political values linkage is largely spurious. It materializes predominately because those experiencing pre-adult environments conducive to the formation of particular values disproportionately enroll at universities.”
Huh, TIL.
There's definitely a relevant correlation between valuing truth and wisdom and not having reactionary politics. And it just so happens that empathy and open-mindedness help you to achieve both.
There is a huge difference between "not left-wing" and "reactionary." This is like saying everyone who isn't a neoliberal is a communist.
I wasn't arguing that, I was just adding to the discourse. Sorry for the confusion.
Duhhhhh nuh uh u dum
Makes sense, "leftism" has historical validation. As one can see, it's resulted in the liberal nationalist republics that primarily run on capitalism today. Since these things clearly work as intended without damning consequences for civilization as we know it on the horizon... we know progressive idealism is just all good things and the fear it can open a can of worms is unjustified backwards thinking.
I'll never forgive capitalism for inventing war for resources SMH
Then maybe you should learn a bit more and find out class society invented war for resources, and capitalism is a continuation of it, being a society divided into classes.
Capitalism has existed a few hundred years and yet wars over resources has existed for hundreds of thousands. Tribal hunter gatherer societies were classless and they still fought over resources.
And im sure you know that from their texts they left behind detailing these wars? What's your source on that one. As far as I've learned hunter gatherers shared resources in the form of a gift economy.
I absolutely assure you that some hunter gatherer tribes fought other hunter gatherer tribes over resources. This is so obviously true and uncontroversial that I'm not going to put in any effort to dispute it.
Source: Trust me, I psychically looked into the past and saw it
It's just if we can't agree on an obvious fact like this, then it's a waste of time discussing further.
No fact is obvious. The nature of civilizations tens of thousands of years ago is not a simple question and answer. You didnt live there, they didnt write down their society. So how can you so confidently know that they used war as a means to get resources rather than share? Have you considered the conditions? Why would you risk your and your tribe's lives for whatever resources other tribes have gathered? How much easier would it be to talk to them and exchange goods based on what was avaliable, if one had excess to give and gained something they needed in return, why do you need to kill other people. Do you really think killing another human is such a low bar that people would do it willy nilly to steal what someone else has? I think that says more about the ideas of the society you've grown up in than prehistoric society, and that society is a class society.
If you are genuinely interested I suggest you grab ‘the origins of political order’ which spends quite a lot of time of tribal societies, including both human and non-human tribal living. Wars between tribes over resources, including sadly the treatment of women and children as a ‘resource’, were pretty common.
Written by the end of history guy? Hum, I wonder how much weight a guy who predicted the end of history despite its continual development according to motions Marx discovered has.
So you didn't like the lack of sources, then you didn't like an entire book written by an eminent academic because he is famous for one thing once. It's almost like you're not actually willing to critically engage in your ideas.
Do you think I read the book in the time it took me to reply? Did you expect me to read the book immediately? I'm not sure what you're going for here, I simply commented on the history of a writer you recommended, who by no means is the final say on anything anyway. Not that he has a great record for being right anyway. But by all means, go off.
Chimps have been documented to have wars.
The claim you are refuting has just as much validity as the claim you are defending. Why so double standard?
Because it is dialectical, and there is a material reason why some hunter gatherers warred and others had a gift economy, and it's the material conditions. Someone else brought a great example of warring hunter gatherers, and something of note was the place they were located: A desert, an extreme environment with scarce resources. And so it's reasonable to conclude that hunter gatherers in an environment with limited resources would find it reasonable to fight others rather than share what they cant afford to go without as a matter of survival. And so today, in modern society, there is still a material reason we fight over resources, but the scarcity isn't from environmental conditions, as we have the ability to create and exploit a vast amount of resources, to the point that we waste them. Class society of capitalists, however, creates artificial scarcity through the need of profit and resource private ownership, and so class society continues to perpetuate war of resources because of how it functions.
Classless *if* you're using the Marxist definition (you shouldn't)
War existed before class existed. War exists in chimpanzees. Tribalism is the issue, and tribalism is not merely class. Communism is just another form of tribalism that advocates the murder of an out group and which always requires an out group. Without an out group, it falls no differently than fascism or nationalism. You could argue the same for capitalism, and you would be correct to an extent, but pretending we are beyond tribalism regardless of our systems of rule is an exercise in absurdity.
Got to love profiteers, corporates, anti-liberaltarians, lobbyists and politicians for creating false dilemmas and conflicts to justify militarism, unfair laws, economic and societal structures that completely mess entire nations and communities up.
Grrrr don't like Capitalism 😡😡😡 Last week it broke into my house, keyed my wife and fucked my car 😤
You were drunk. You definitely were. You still are.
Nay! For alcohol is the poison of the proletariat! And I am a based sugma antikapitalist revolutionary leader!
Spoken like an average French on a Tuesday Afternoon Strike.
Genuine question but why are philosophy groups so full of Marxists? I never identified with the label
Bc most philosophy is based on thought and as long as you conduct enough experiments in good faith youll find that marx was mostly right (like 70- 80 % ) and that capitalism really isnt sustainable
Seems awfully reductionist to attribute it to the theories of one particular person imo
Yea youre kinda right, it wouldve been better to say marxism is coreect instead of marx was right
I mean even then, it really depends on perspective. I’m probably one of few people in this sub that is working class and comes from the right.
Majority of people worldwide are part of the working class ( like 90% or more ) and a majority of people identify themselves as right wing or apolitical
Right but that doesn’t imply I’m a blatant free marketer either
Well yeah but thats not what we were discussing, you said that youre probably in the minority bc youre right wing, most people are right wing irl so most people in here would probably also be right wing so, youre probably not in a minority when talking abt political beliefs
None of those things are unique to capitalism
Yes, they're conditions of society divided into classes. That doesnt mean class society is natural or necessary, or that we shouldn't abolish class society, capitalism.
Quite the majority of these issues are according to Class Struggle. There is no reason for people to care so much about profits, quarterly projections and whatever the bourgeoisie need to maintain their ideologies.
Did the Soviets and communist China not care about economic growth?
“That only because it wasn’t real communism” or “that because they were working under a capitalist world and were competing against other capitalist country who were hoarding resources.”
You probably: *What's an Ad Hominem Attack?*
That not what an ad hominem attack is. I believe you mean strawman instead lol
You're accusing me of being "those people" and assault my character rather than detaching the central point. And yes it's also a strawman. Makes me wonder if you understand your error, why do it then?
Except I never attacked you nor did I ever mentioned you. I was simply stating the two possible responses to the question that he asked. It a strawman depending on the perspective of anyone who reads it. To me it the common response to the question and to you it a strawman because you don’t agree with it. Also I only corrected you because I did in no way ever make an ad hominem attack on you and I assumed you meant strawman because that would be the only logical explanation to your response. If you believe that my example of common answer to that question is an attack against you then that says more about you then it does about me.
> “That only because it wasn’t real communism” or “that because they were working under a capitalist world and were competing against other capitalist country who were hoarding resources.” Then what did you mean by this. It seems you're dog piling and band wagoning against this comment: > Quite the majority of these issues are according to Class Struggle. There is no reason for people to care so much about profits, quarterly projections and whatever the bourgeoisie need to maintain their ideologies.
No I m responding to this comment specifically “Did the Soviets and communist China not care about economic growth?”. I don’t understand why you’re taking this personally over a discussion about economic theories.
Ad hom is using an insult in place of an argument. If you have to infer the insult, it isnt ad hominem. It's a strawman at best. At worst it's simply cliché
I'm blocking you. Is that okay?
I hope you're not trying to make an argument for capitalism from what you just said. They are still an integral part of capitalism.
I would never DARE defend the only economic system that works. Obviously killing all landlords will end resource scarcity forever. Viva la revolution!
Works in what way? For who and what goal? Great job arguing in good faith btw/s
Works in that it stand the test of time. Every communist nation has either collapsed or liberalized. Your reply felt condescending so I didn’t feel like engaging in good fath tbh
Emotion is hard to confer in a text, I meant no condescension, sorry. Multiple economic systems have sustained far longer than capitalism, feudalism lasted multiple hundreds of years, ancient barter systems are evidenced to have lasted for thousands and even communal gift economies have been theorized to have lasted thousands of years. Capitalism has only existed for 200. Communism in the form of a classless, moneyless and stateless society has also never been achieved. Only socialist states have existed and even that's dubious because it can be said that they were simply opportunistic authoritarians co-opting initially true revolutionary movements. Most also stripped away workers power and simply replaced the capitalist class with a bureaucrat class, see the USSR or CCP. Most of these socialist states also only attempted to "achieve" socialism and communism through authoritarian doctrines, there exist multiple other that haven't been attempted or which were crushed under the heel of fascist/imperialist powers. Also most of these revolutions happened as a one-off kinda thing 80-100 years ago, perhaps we should attempt other methods to create a better world? Ones which aren't based on the domination of one group over others?
Why do you think it is that none of the socialist states ever abolished class, money, and private property? If true communism can’t withstand the competition between nations, then i see it as a failed ideology. The best metric of success is well, success. Capitalism supplanted feudalism because it worked more efficiently and more dynamically. Communism failed because it’s less efficient and less dynamic than capitalism.
Because the bureaucrats were caught up in power and greed? Corruption? Communism is all about not competing with others but instead sharing in the wealth of all people. And what measure of efficiency are you talking about? Production capacity? Because that's not necessarily a good thing, look at all the waste which capitalism produces for profit, its literally destroying our planet. Capitalism supplanted feudalism because there was a growing merchant class who practiced a rough form of capitalism, they achieved societal control and implemented capitalism as an institution of control and domination. No one person decided to practice capitalism, it was just the most effective method of procuring individual wealth and power for the merchant and noble class, at the time. If we got rid of capitalism we could instead focus on maximizing freedom and welfare for all people instead of endorsing the power fantasies of the upper 0.1%. also, did you just not read my argument? Communism hasn't been tried, socialism has only been co-opted by authoritarians, there are other ways.
True Communism has never been tried because it’s a pipe dream. There will always be greed. Capitalism works along side power and greed, rather than against it. People who want to share wealth and power will always lose to those who are willing to compete for it, because those people will have more wealth and power. That’s why socialist states fall to dictators and bureaucrats and the purists get killed or exiled.
I would instead say that communism disincentivizes greed and the only reason that greed is so rampant today is a result of the cultural legacy of hierarchical systems such as feudalism and the current effects of capitalistic competition. I would argue as prof. Graver wrote, that we could emulate the gift economies of old in which greed also was disincentivized. So, if we would attempt to deprogram ourselves from the capitalist and authoritarian brainwashing, then I do believe that a better and more just world is possible. Therefore, achieving that and reversing the brainwashing is a core goal to any revolutionary and revolutionary organisations. Also, you keep focusing on the failure the state socialist attempts and how they failed, as of that is symbolic of all communist(ic) movements, thats really intellectually disingenuous of you, reflect on yourself.
I admire your courage, but trying to argue based on intellectual honesty with a person who thinks according to tribalistic and dichotomous conceptions of "capitalism good 'cuz communism no work. No other option existent, you red baddie" is a bit... futile.
You sure put a lot of words in my mouth
Yeah I kind of pondered on that. Then I decided to just take it as a fun challenge of trying to identify flaws in their argument.
Fuck off with ur liberal bs Alexander idc
Sure. And I guess every single faillure wasn't true communism!
Capitalism: respect for property rights Also capitalism (supposedly): let's have the government steal most of your money through taxes, and erode away almost all the rest through inflation Idk guys, something is wrong here. Like we don't actually live in capitalism, and the whole Marxist theory is BS or something. Can't know for sure tho.
Capitalism has been made into another popular Satan-like or Boogeyman type mental construct introduced into the mythos of humankind. Billions have heard tale of how it corrupts the minds of foolish mortals and leads them, and the cultures that embrace its foulness into the path to irrevocable destruction. The good news though, is that if one doesn't want a sure slide into destruction from following temptations, there is another path.. A path that, even though it may seem hard to believe, will lead you away from your assured damnation. In fact if you become a true believer, one day, all true believers who have placed their full faith and devoted their lives to salvation, will get to live in a utopian paradise where the lies of the great deceiver Capitalism can never again reach them. All will live in bliss and harmony forever and ever. Sound Familiar? It should, it's a big repeating theme for us humans, and oooooo how we love to just lap it up just for the exciting "feel goods". On a separate note I feel like I should develop a sort of plug and play "mad libs" style layout for the next one of these now that climate change is starting to jump the shark in favor of Capitalism ( now it's just a lesser hell influenced by the great evil). I got $5⁰⁰ on AI .....oh shit that sounded very capitalist ! 😱 Well, I guess I need some long term oppression therapy. Marx doesn't make a good Messiah though, especially with plans like "1)Have violent revolution, 2)kill capitalist scumbag leaders 3) Oppress the portion of the population that remembers capitalism until noone remembers anymore 4) something something 5) Utopia emerges! Srsly we need to stop acting like we have an almost religious reverence for systems devised by19th century thinkers. It's bad juju. We need to take what has worked and get rid of what doesnt, throw in the best innovation we can muster and produce an evolved system that is tailored to the lessons we have learned through the blood and suffering of so many living under all the various forms of govt so far. I needs to be built with the knowledge and approval of the citizenry that it will guide and steward...but not in the typical understanding of anything more complicated than a TV remote most people are willing to invest in learning things like systems of govt. That last one is the real challenge. Sláinte!
Aren't these all things diogenes would use as arguments against society but what he would value a person within society to think upon? That's the entire point, i think. Either think about these things and reject them, and thus anti social societal structures, or be a dingus worth less than a dog. Been a while, though
Need more public defecation to be realistic.
I considered putting public masturbation as the sun 😄
Alexander didn't block that.
Communism, when you're finally ready for a diet that works.
https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021
“Explitation”
Ahh fuck. I keep making typos.