How has what I said got anything to do with liberal ideology? If anything, the implication of what I said is that we need more authoritarianism, in order to stop people fucking around.
You didn’t ask a question besides “can you stay on topic,” which was already bullshit because @Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml was responding to your “we need more authoritarianism, in order to stop people fucking around” comment.
My question was how me saying people are the problem has anything to do with liberal ideology? My statement about authoritarianism was to point out that what I said before was definitely not liberal.
What would be liberal would be to say it’s a good thing that people can fuck around and twist things to their benefit, as if that was the system working as intended. I’m not saying that. I’m saying systems aren’t working, and the problem is people.
If you keep framing the problem as caused by the system, then you’ll be blind to the people problem in whatever system you implement to replace it.
Yeah so first off, we need to acknowledge that people are social animals. We aren’t special creatures separate from our evolution. As social animals our outlook is determined by our direct relationships with other people and our place among our community and society at large. This directly informs not only our ability to live and survive and reproduce, but our kins ability to survive and also reproduce.
Here we see the rough outline of the beginning of larger society from the base unit. It’s an incredibly more complex topic than this but we must be brief. What’s interesting here is that we also see the beginnings of class once women start being traded. Again very complex and requires books, but let’s keep general trends in mind as we are supposed to when discussing macro concepts (as a side, that’s another point liberals tend to forget - the need to focus on overall trends, which is necessary for the discussion of massive economies and history over time). So now we have class within society which also directly informs our direct relationships and relationships abroad.
And this is a self sustaining mechanism (because we are social - that is to say we care about our relationships and thus shared interests because they benefit us individually or our kin) that changes very slowly over thousands of years due to many factors (reading a book is again required). We can use the European model of history and generalize that dominant classes tend to change hands every couple of thousands or hundreds of years. Because it is self sustaining (somewhat - civilizations can fluctuate, for example the collapse of the USSR*, or the existence of the southern American slave economy within a capitalist world), a dominant class can effectively shape its own society for a long period of time. There are obviously a billion conditions that can determine what state a society is in at any given time, but again, we are concerned with the model here, or in other words the general trend.
So in this we start to see how people actually behave through the unification of biology and human history. It’s extremely rough and in the works but strong enough that we can reject any suggestions about human behavior that fall short of the standard. What this means about “bad people fucking around” is that this is a view of people in a very narrow view of history. As class changes how people act (again, generally) accordingly to their relationships, in a dictatorship of the proletariat you expect over time the likelihood of bad actors (1) appearing to decrease and (2) the likelihood of succeeding at whatever they do to decrease as well.
*For a quick look at the fall of the Soviet Union (a sample size of 1, but important nonetheless) I recommend a video by either Hakim or Paul Cockshott.
This post was paid for by Xi bucks. Yes my social credit score is through the roof. Comrades may reproduce this post for free without referencing the writer.
Not going to answer subsequent questions. They can be answered by further inquiry to proper sources.
Whether you are liberal has little to do with how you see yourself or with what you profess to be. I am a Marxist but if I say something liberal, I either need to correct it or I will become a liberal. I must rely on others’ criticism and my own self criticism to spot liberalism, and to correct my ways.
If I repeatedly did and said liberal things, it wouldn’t matter if I still called myself a Marxist because that would rest on an idealist version of myself – and preferring the ideal over the material is theoretically liberal, not Marxist. I would be liberal, not Marxist in praxis (liberal thought and liberal action), regardless of what I wanted to be or thought I was.
Marxists are dialectical materialists. Which is a theory of change or of becoming. There is no ‘stasis’ or things, only processes, relations, and various levels of abstraction: nothing stands still. I am an individual, a worker, a prole, a human. I am always in a state of becoming. Either becoming a Marxist or becoming a liberal or, god forbid, becoming a fascist. The latter isn’t very likely but it would happen if I were to start doing and saying fascist things even if I didn’t like to be called it.
According to Bertell Ollman in Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (2003, pp. 88–91) when Marx does ‘abstraction’, he moves between seven levels of generality:
The individual person, you or me as unique,
People in general, as they act and behave in the last 20–50 years,
Capitalism as a political economic system,
Class society,
Human society,
The animal world,
Material nature.
Marx/ists use/s all seven, but mainly the first five. Others flit between all seven, but inconsistently and incompletely.
The liberal/bourgeois framework works primarily on two levels. The first, the abstract, unique individual. And the fifth, the abstract human society. Hence liberals talk about people or humanity as a whole. Rarely, if ever, will liberals – or, to be trite people looking through a lens of liberal ideology – abstract to another level of generality.
So when you abstract to the level of individual people or to the level where ‘human nature’ appears coherent, when you refuse to abstract to the other levels of generality, you are, whether consciously or subconsciously, being liberal.
Notice how Giyuu traced through the history of human society to explain that class society arose at a certain point, and that humans in different class societies display a different kind of ‘nature’ than those in other class societies or in pre-class society. Giyuu concluded that under socialism, human relations will develop until the motivation e.g. for what we might call greed and corruption will dissolve. ‘Human nature’ will again look different to what it looks like under capitalism/class society.
It is not possible – at least, it will be very difficult – to see or accept what Giyuu describes without opening up to the idea of different levels of generality, beyond the individual or the human society. To reject or dismiss the other levels of abstraction, to insist on using only two, is almost if not by definition, to be liberal.
Edit: rejecting somebody’s argument for ‘framing the problem as caused by the system’ is the type of dismissal/rejection that I’m taking about in the last paragraph.
Thank you for your in depth reply, while I don’t fully agree with everything I do appreciate the insight. Also tying in @Giyuu’s comment, which seemed to be a summary of a longer argument but missing important detail.
I don’t agree with your definition of liberal. Stealing a definition off the internet, I think the most appropriate one in this context is:
a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
Loosely applying those 7 stages, I’d say it covers 1) The individual, 3) Capitalism, and 5) Human society. So I agree that the definition primarily covers 2 levels of generality (1 and 5).
However, to say that “a liberal only abstracts to these levels of generality” is nonsense. It’s like you’re taking a stencil of the definition, then saying anything that fits inside the stencil meets the definition, even if it looks nothing like the definition.
I wrote a short, simple statement:
The same is true of many implementations of communism. The problem isn’t the system, the problem is people, and people try to corrupt the system to their benefit.
You’ve assumed that because I only mentioned “the system” and “people” that I am talking in stages 1 and 5 (I would argue it’s more 1 and 3). By applying your stencil that means I’m liberal (or what I’m saying is, and because I said it I am). However, to expand it and flavour it with your stages, I could say:
In any group of people working together, there will always be the potential of an individual intentionally corrupting things for their benefit.
The point of what I’m saying is that there will always be the potential of an individual (1) stepping out of line and screwing things. That could cover a political system (3), inter- or intra-class relationships (4), or social status (5); an individual can poison any or all of them. You may argue that a different political system could reduce the likelihood of individuals stepping out, with greed and corruption dissolved, but they will never truly be gone as people as individuals will always have that capacity.
Furthermore when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal - “individual rights” being the first tenant, when I’m saying the individual is the issue. I did stop short of saying individual rights aren’t important, however I’m clearly pointing towards the need for limits on those rights. So I firmly reject labelling my initial statement as liberal - it might fit the stencil, but it doesn’t fit the actual definition.
How has what I said got anything to do with liberal ideology? If anything, the implication of what I said is that we need more authoritarianism, in order to stop people fucking around.
So… you’re a fascist?
Communism provides a solution to capitalism by being a more democratic system, both politically, and economically. Not by being more authoritarian.
No I’m asking how what I said had anything to do with liberal ideology. Can you stay on topic?
Most communist nations have not been very good when it comes to democracy. Not that they couldn’t be, but it obviously isn’t an inherent property.
Do you know what liberal means or do you think it just means Democrat?
Again, that isn’t an answer to my question. And no I do not think liberal means Democrat, I’m not in the US.
You didn’t ask a question besides “can you stay on topic,” which was already bullshit because @Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml was responding to your “we need more authoritarianism, in order to stop people fucking around” comment.
My question was how me saying people are the problem has anything to do with liberal ideology? My statement about authoritarianism was to point out that what I said before was definitely not liberal.
What would be liberal would be to say it’s a good thing that people can fuck around and twist things to their benefit, as if that was the system working as intended. I’m not saying that. I’m saying systems aren’t working, and the problem is people.
If you keep framing the problem as caused by the system, then you’ll be blind to the people problem in whatever system you implement to replace it.
Yeah so first off, we need to acknowledge that people are social animals. We aren’t special creatures separate from our evolution. As social animals our outlook is determined by our direct relationships with other people and our place among our community and society at large. This directly informs not only our ability to live and survive and reproduce, but our kins ability to survive and also reproduce.
Here we see the rough outline of the beginning of larger society from the base unit. It’s an incredibly more complex topic than this but we must be brief. What’s interesting here is that we also see the beginnings of class once women start being traded. Again very complex and requires books, but let’s keep general trends in mind as we are supposed to when discussing macro concepts (as a side, that’s another point liberals tend to forget - the need to focus on overall trends, which is necessary for the discussion of massive economies and history over time). So now we have class within society which also directly informs our direct relationships and relationships abroad.
And this is a self sustaining mechanism (because we are social - that is to say we care about our relationships and thus shared interests because they benefit us individually or our kin) that changes very slowly over thousands of years due to many factors (reading a book is again required). We can use the European model of history and generalize that dominant classes tend to change hands every couple of thousands or hundreds of years. Because it is self sustaining (somewhat - civilizations can fluctuate, for example the collapse of the USSR*, or the existence of the southern American slave economy within a capitalist world), a dominant class can effectively shape its own society for a long period of time. There are obviously a billion conditions that can determine what state a society is in at any given time, but again, we are concerned with the model here, or in other words the general trend.
So in this we start to see how people actually behave through the unification of biology and human history. It’s extremely rough and in the works but strong enough that we can reject any suggestions about human behavior that fall short of the standard. What this means about “bad people fucking around” is that this is a view of people in a very narrow view of history. As class changes how people act (again, generally) accordingly to their relationships, in a dictatorship of the proletariat you expect over time the likelihood of bad actors (1) appearing to decrease and (2) the likelihood of succeeding at whatever they do to decrease as well.
*For a quick look at the fall of the Soviet Union (a sample size of 1, but important nonetheless) I recommend a video by either Hakim or Paul Cockshott.
This post was paid for by Xi bucks. Yes my social credit score is through the roof. Comrades may reproduce this post for free without referencing the writer.
Not going to answer subsequent questions. They can be answered by further inquiry to proper sources.
Whether you are liberal has little to do with how you see yourself or with what you profess to be. I am a Marxist but if I say something liberal, I either need to correct it or I will become a liberal. I must rely on others’ criticism and my own self criticism to spot liberalism, and to correct my ways.
If I repeatedly did and said liberal things, it wouldn’t matter if I still called myself a Marxist because that would rest on an idealist version of myself – and preferring the ideal over the material is theoretically liberal, not Marxist. I would be liberal, not Marxist in praxis (liberal thought and liberal action), regardless of what I wanted to be or thought I was.
Marxists are dialectical materialists. Which is a theory of change or of becoming. There is no ‘stasis’ or things, only processes, relations, and various levels of abstraction: nothing stands still. I am an individual, a worker, a prole, a human. I am always in a state of becoming. Either becoming a Marxist or becoming a liberal or, god forbid, becoming a fascist. The latter isn’t very likely but it would happen if I were to start doing and saying fascist things even if I didn’t like to be called it.
According to Bertell Ollman in Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (2003, pp. 88–91) when Marx does ‘abstraction’, he moves between seven levels of generality:
Marx/ists use/s all seven, but mainly the first five. Others flit between all seven, but inconsistently and incompletely.
The liberal/bourgeois framework works primarily on two levels. The first, the abstract, unique individual. And the fifth, the abstract human society. Hence liberals talk about people or humanity as a whole. Rarely, if ever, will liberals – or, to be trite people looking through a lens of liberal ideology – abstract to another level of generality.
So when you abstract to the level of individual people or to the level where ‘human nature’ appears coherent, when you refuse to abstract to the other levels of generality, you are, whether consciously or subconsciously, being liberal.
Notice how Giyuu traced through the history of human society to explain that class society arose at a certain point, and that humans in different class societies display a different kind of ‘nature’ than those in other class societies or in pre-class society. Giyuu concluded that under socialism, human relations will develop until the motivation e.g. for what we might call greed and corruption will dissolve. ‘Human nature’ will again look different to what it looks like under capitalism/class society.
It is not possible – at least, it will be very difficult – to see or accept what Giyuu describes without opening up to the idea of different levels of generality, beyond the individual or the human society. To reject or dismiss the other levels of abstraction, to insist on using only two, is almost if not by definition, to be liberal.
Edit: rejecting somebody’s argument for ‘framing the problem as caused by the system’ is the type of dismissal/rejection that I’m taking about in the last paragraph.
Thank you for your in depth reply, while I don’t fully agree with everything I do appreciate the insight. Also tying in @Giyuu’s comment, which seemed to be a summary of a longer argument but missing important detail.
I don’t agree with your definition of liberal. Stealing a definition off the internet, I think the most appropriate one in this context is:
Loosely applying those 7 stages, I’d say it covers 1) The individual, 3) Capitalism, and 5) Human society. So I agree that the definition primarily covers 2 levels of generality (1 and 5).
However, to say that “a liberal only abstracts to these levels of generality” is nonsense. It’s like you’re taking a stencil of the definition, then saying anything that fits inside the stencil meets the definition, even if it looks nothing like the definition.
I wrote a short, simple statement:
You’ve assumed that because I only mentioned “the system” and “people” that I am talking in stages 1 and 5 (I would argue it’s more 1 and 3). By applying your stencil that means I’m liberal (or what I’m saying is, and because I said it I am). However, to expand it and flavour it with your stages, I could say:
The point of what I’m saying is that there will always be the potential of an individual (1) stepping out of line and screwing things. That could cover a political system (3), inter- or intra-class relationships (4), or social status (5); an individual can poison any or all of them. You may argue that a different political system could reduce the likelihood of individuals stepping out, with greed and corruption dissolved, but they will never truly be gone as people as individuals will always have that capacity.
Furthermore when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal - “individual rights” being the first tenant, when I’m saying the individual is the issue. I did stop short of saying individual rights aren’t important, however I’m clearly pointing towards the need for limits on those rights. So I firmly reject labelling my initial statement as liberal - it might fit the stencil, but it doesn’t fit the actual definition.
Authoritarianism isn’t a real thing and your belief that it is cements you as a
I didn’t realise you were the arbitrator of what is and what isn’t. Obviously, I defer to your judgement.
I’d tell you to read a book but I don’t think libs are capable
I tried to get a meaningful argument out of you, but it’s very apparent you aren’t capable.
you come into my house, drop lib shit all over the floor and then dare talk down to me? I’ll have you know that I
I didn’t shit anywhere, you just found a mess and started rolling around in it.
I sure fucking did buddy, but I’m not the one who made the mess
I have something I think you should check out
The belief in “human nature” that people’s ideas and beliefs and nature shape the world, and not material conditions is a core part of liberalism
yup. Human nature as an absolute and static thing is garbage philosophy. Marx had it right in Theses on Feuerbach and Capital. https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm
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