babyfinland posted:Themselves posted:id like to see any of you guys explain marxian thought to somebody that has no fucking idea about political economy without sounding like a mouthbreather
with that said i probably could have just gotten up and bought some coffee but i actually get some kind of perverse joy out of asking people if they have studied the things they criticize (dick move, right?)i explain that shit to children and ppl who barely speak english regularly dude step ur game up
im not gonna lie, when somebody posted yesterday about marx's law of surplus value/labor theory of value as lifting weights but 60% of your gains go to somebody that doesn't have good nutrition or even lift, i both took it seriously as potential agitprop yet couldnt take it serious at the same time
dank_xiaopeng posted:how hard is it to say "lazy rich assholes get their money off of our hard work"
when you have a severe speech impediment its hard to say anything with that many syllables
dank_xiaopeng posted:how hard is it to say "lazy rich assholes get their money off of our hard work"
That's not a structural analysis though, that implies that we can just have different leaders, or that the whole problem is indissoluble, no?
Isn't this why we look at things structurally? Because even if I was magically in the spot of one of those rich guys, the only way for me to maintain my class status would be a systemic exploitative arrangement which I can claim I have no moral influence in, it just "is"?
so of course i want to get the little community college kids up to date on some anti-capitalist shit but they're just getting used to argumentation structure or other bourgeois (the formal structure of debate/information presentation) concerns
im pretty sure Tim Wise called this style of debate a "bastion of white supremacy/privilege" (paraphrasing) and it really is an activity most people get into to pad their transcripts or help with a career in X or Y. the kind of arguments that win in these debates would make rules lawyers cream their pants. on the other hand, you have equal time with your opponent to get what you want across, so its an amazing opportunity to air criticism and speak publicly to an audience that presumably has been indoctrinated to let the logic speak for itself.
my first Big Boy books were Manufacturing Consent, Necessary Illusions, A People's History, and Killing Hope Not necessarily revisionist, but not necessarily Marxist or even anti-capitalist either.
is this where directionless agitation against one thing is remade as agitation for its opposite?
babyfinland posted:Lol is babyfinland being asked abt some hs debate club
college debate is pretty intense brah u ever seen a round? by intense i mean brain melting
Themselves posted:so doesn't that mean its even more important to not let them coopt anti-capitalist feelings into bootstraps?
undoubtedly - i dunno to what extent college debates are really going to help matters. i mistakenly exaggerated about how many warm bodies are in the libertarian movement. those who really buy into its economic policies are invariably frustrated petty bourgeois. so it doesn't matter that they're probably lost to any kind of socialist persuasion. yet they're loud. they're really hella loud. they push the discourse into directions even the capitalists don't want it to go, (though it helps them on the whole). at the same time we don't have walmart workers and mcdonalds servers marching under the red flag, despite that they have they clearly have the will and the organization to march as the last couple of years has proven
babyfinland posted:I'm not trying to be rude sorry. I just don't care of E Oakland debate team is Marxist or not
the funny thing is i decided the same thing, it was a waste of my time to try and agitate kids that had future dreams of college in their eyes
yet when i hear bhpn or others talking about doing what you can wherever it is that you live to push a Maoist/strong marxist line or whatever, that shit seems inspiring to me in the context of living in an ocean of right wing radio, endless strip malls and paycheck advance centers.
thirdplace posted:just note the necessity and particularities of growth under capitalism and that they're not making more land. you'll force your liberal opponents into sounding like space nerds, which they invariably are, and nobody likes nerds
i was on the debate team two times, most recently as a coach. both times i was on the team we had a techno-fetishist guy that would do research at home and come into debates on poverty with cases about some kind of new food technology that would solve world hunger... talk about space elevators and other bullshit and then lose the round to some smooth talking 22 year old bill kristol clone
these kinds of ideas are looked at as "creative" and "innovative" despite being unfeasible. im worried that people don't laugh these spacenerds out of the room, like youre saying they will.... that on a cultural level we're all just hoping elon musk will save us all
i feel like when you move away from the core contradiction of capitalism: marx's labor theory of value, you move toward the infinite permutations of pro capitalist intellectual degeneracy since you're unable to really nail down where the problem lies (LTV versus the exchange model)
Themselves posted:babyfinland posted:I'm not trying to be rude sorry. I just don't care of E Oakland debate team is Marxist or not
the funny thing is i decided the same thing, it was a waste of my time to try and agitate kids that had future dreams of college in their eyes
yet when i hear bhpn or others talking about doing what you can wherever it is that you live to push a Maoist/strong marxist line or whatever, that shit seems inspiring to me in the context of living in an ocean of right wing radio, endless strip malls and paycheck advance centers.
Yes well u better learn how to distinguish that feeling from the truth or someone is going to make u a sucker imo
Edited by babyfinland ()
elektrenai posted:do you do the kind of debate that was making all the racists mad two weeks ago because the two best teams were all black and the championship debate was about colonialism?
that's policy debate which is very similar but not the same. policy debate started in the 70's or something and it uses evidence which is printed out exerpts from Daddy Zizek or Feminist scholars or maybe Ben Stein i dont know. over the years it turned into literally learning to talk like an auctioneer as you stumble through Xeroxed debate notes and spew paragraphs of academese at the judge, only to win or lose at the end based on the number of dropped arguments or whatever
i was doing parliamentary debate which actually requires that no written evidence is allowed, and everything is "common knowledge" so its cool to argue that the Holodomor was bougeois propaganda or the War in Iraq was done in our defense. there's fast talking in that style, but this style was founded to try and get away from policy debate, away from fast talking and written evidence. over time, parli has become like policy, and there's fast talking in both now.
some of the urban debate league type schools began doing stuff like reading their whole case in Navajo or singing a song as their case as some kind of performative criticism on the resolution itself or even on the bourgeois structure of the debate round .... there's a lot being argued in those debates that comes from Judy Butler or other people im not well versed in... and there's plenty of Bad Marxism, Bad Capitalism Criticism (read as: liberal and white as fuck)
Edited by Themselves ()
Themselves posted:yet when i hear bhpn
first mistake
c_man posted:Themselves posted:yet when i hear bhpn
first mistake
you're imperialist scum hth
Themselves posted:babyfinland posted:I'm not trying to be rude sorry. I just don't care of E Oakland debate team is Marxist or not
the funny thing is i decided the same thing, it was a waste of my time to try and agitate kids that had future dreams of college in their eyes
yet when i hear bhpn or others talking about doing what you can wherever it is that you live to push a Maoist/strong marxist line or whatever, that shit seems inspiring to me in the context of living in an ocean of right wing radio, endless strip malls and paycheck advance centers.
even i'll admit that in this context (im in grad school to not have a real job) talking about marx and defending mao/kim il-sung is mostly for myself and the coherence of my argument, as well as most people who are passive listeners and really have no opinions one way or the other about much of anything political. i dont expect to lead a bunch of students into guerrilla warfare even though chairman gonzalo showed it can be done
babyhueypnewton posted:c_man posted:Themselves posted:yet when i hear bhpn
first mistake
you're imperialist scum hth
do you really think that showing up anywhere but a place full of other leftists are spouting off about the kim dynasty makes you look anything other than a lunatic?
hurrr hurrrr hurrrrrrr
c_man posted:babyhueypnewton posted:c_man posted:Themselves posted:yet when i hear bhpn
first mistake
you're imperialist scum hth
do you really think that showing up anywhere but a place full of other leftists are spouting off about the kim dynasty makes you look anything other than a lunatic?
the kim dynasty
Crow posted:c_man posted:babyhueypnewton posted:c_man posted:Themselves posted:yet when i hear bhpn
first mistake
you're imperialist scum hth
do you really think that showing up anywhere but a place full of other leftists are spouting off about the kim dynasty makes you look anything other than a lunatic?
the kim dynasty
you know, like the bushes or the clintons or the kennedys if they hadn't all died