d4ky posted:

gyrofry posted:

...A corollary to this is that revolutionary communism will necessarily result in a degradation of the standard of living for the aforementioned...

...that the presently known combination of global natural resources and technological advancement, intentionally managed and directed toward beneficent and purposeful ends could not be allocated in such a manner as to establish something closer to a post-scarcity star trek economy; etc.

Is it not possible to conceive of a revolutionary communist economy that makes the entire pie higher, rather than as a rising tide that drowns currently floating yachts?

gyrofry posted:

thats not really what I'm asking though. I'm not predicating anything on the development of new whizzbang technology. The question (and it is a question) is more like: isn't it true that the notion that a life of luxury is not possible for everybody contingent on the notion that the currently existing array of commodities and social relations cannot be expanded/exceeded under an alternative social order, but can at best result in a somewhat more equitable redistribution of what contemporary global-imperial-capitalism has produced? and if this is a predicate, has this predicate actually been comprehensively examined and refuted by any theorists?

Keeping what was said in khamsek's gasoline thread in mind, I think these areas could be very important sites for action from first world communists, or any stripe of radical leftist in order to assist leftist organizations on the periphery; but, we still have to contend with the actual smashing of capitalism (and the structures that keep it in place), lest we use our technological advantages to reproduce the same climate of surveillance by state structures, and wastefulness of our resources found in our heavily digitalized societies. It's likely true that this will require a degradation of certain aspects of our lifestyle, like our hamburgers and planned obsolescence found in many of our electronics.

Y3h46EbqhPo

You might like this video. Kleiner conceives of states as a collusion between public and private interests, and these states use coercion (by way of surveillance and behavioral control enabled by our technologies) to retain wealth accumulation.

The use of data collection, retention and social media - three crucial methods that allow our economy to function in the age of the internet, are inherently part of the logic that structures the way these technologies work (I'm thinking of the IPOS cycle here). To paraphrase what Applebaum mentions around 26:20, we route our communications through protocols that our computers/machines can easily parse and store; and, we keep inventing new ways to make these processes faster and more efficient, because this is where the money is. This turns us internet users into customers and products, as Kleiner mentions around 37:20, because this logic is amenable to organizations like intelligence agencies, social media platforms and marketing agencies. Going by the modus operandi of Applebaum and his ilk with Tor and Wikileaks, cryptography will be one important way to protect the internet as a public space, and our own private communications from the watchful eye of the NSA; but as we've seen with Wikileaks, using crypto with journalism based on a model of open source intelligence to assist whistleblowers in taking down corrupt elites, will only result in superficial changes to our system. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Applebaum says around the beginning of the video that we cannot become “post-privacy” until we become “post-privilege”. I like that he brings up privilege in this context, because he reminds us that this concept is important in effectively communicating with groups without the access and privilege we have. I think we can agree that discarding much of what has infected modern Western leftism, like the ugly byproducts of privilege discourse, will be necessary, but I won't get into that now, as this post is already kinda long.

Basically, destroying the institutions that allow the unmitigated use of drones to assasinate dangers to these state structures, and supercomputers to process and store the data we put online to find this "terrorist activity" would be good starting points I think.

Wow that hipster guy on the left is unbearable to look at.

A repressive view of power is liberal and impotent. Seeing the state and the bourgeois disciplinary apparatus as one of "coercion" rather than creation leads to us vs. them views and prescriptions of destroying the system, as if the system is an alien that controls us rather than a hegemonic, creative system that represses us but also shapes our consciousness. Anyone who thinks that people do not willingly submit to the internet age "social media" surveillance state, and that people do not conceive of human relationships as extensions of technology (rather than some primitive utopia about the commons and innate human goodness) is in for a nasty surprise when then people don't rise up to join their hippie commune or gross anarchist revolution.

Protecting public spaces (the communes as the new anarchists call them), protecting true humanistic consciousness from "infection", destroying coercive institutions to allow the drive for freedom that is being repressed, these are all illusions, illusions that Marxism has never shared with liberalism. Marxism is about creation of alternative institutions of coercion, creating a new man who thinks and acts wholly different from the liberal man, creating a different society which makes an entirely new mirror for people to create their self-image in. It is a new science, and though it is articulated in the language of Hegel and liberalism it is wholly separate and revolutionary.

Foucault was no Marxist, but his insights are worth a lot and you seem to have misplaced them while getting caught up in occupy-esque fashionable humanism. As for the OP, it's nothing more than a question of economics, and p much all numbers I've seen show that our current standard of living is unsustainable for much longer even under capitalism. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're asking, unless you're sneaking in the Venus project in left sounding language.

gyrofry posted:

I don't know what the venus project is, but yes as I intended it, it was a question about economics.

When you say "all numbers I've seen show" etc -- this is really kind of what I'm wondering about. Is there some analysis out there that covers this thoroughly?

there are different ways to approach this. ecologically, economically, and politically.

ecologically: global warming, extinction of species, deforestation, overusing land, acidification of the ocean, ozone depletion, and basically overusing and destroying the earth in every conceivable way are all issues that have been well documented. global warming is probably the most severe because it has a compounding effect and has already gone past the point where we could stop it even if there was a worldwide eco-socialist revolution tonight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review (this was in 2006 and obviously nothing was done nor could anything be done under capitalism)

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

this stinks of malthus though, so i usually avoid eco talk unless im trying to point out to a liberal that they are suicidal and living in denial every day.

economically: we already had a thread on the falling rate of profit, and we've had more than enough threads on the 1st world labor aristocracy and neo-colonial system throughout the history of LF. the point here is that the current system is unsustainable and the world shaking changes that are happening to capitalism have only begun to happen. we're still in the re-proletarianization of the 1st world stage, we haven't even seen what comes after that.

politically: NATO has failed in Syria, BRICS is replacing U.S. hegemony for a multi-polar world, the dollar and the euro are crap and the bourgeois economists are incapable of solving anything. latin america is lost, and 30 years of direct political repression of the left has been lost in only a few years of crisis.

sorry I'm speaking so generally and in such grandiose terms, but you're basically asking "what is the structure of the global political-economic system?" which is a big question.

babyhueypnewton posted:

Wow that hipster guy on the left is unbearable to look at.

A repressive view of power is liberal and impotent. Seeing the state and the bourgeois disciplinary apparatus as one of "coercion" rather than creation leads to us vs. them views and prescriptions of destroying the system, as if the system is an alien that controls us rather than a hegemonic, creative system that represses us but also shapes our consciousness. Anyone who thinks that people do not willingly submit to the internet age "social media" surveillance state, and that people do not conceive of human relationships as extensions of technology (rather than some primitive utopia about the commons and innate human goodness) is in for a nasty surprise when then people don't rise up to join their hippie commune or gross anarchist revolution.

Protecting public spaces (the communes as the new anarchists call them), protecting true humanistic consciousness from "infection", destroying coercive institutions to allow the drive for freedom that is being repressed, these are all illusions, illusions that Marxism has never shared with liberalism. Marxism is about creation of alternative institutions of coercion, creating a new man who thinks and acts wholly different from the liberal man, creating a different society which makes an entirely new mirror for people to create their self-image in. It is a new science, and though it is articulated in the language of Hegel and liberalism it is wholly separate and revolutionary.

Foucault was no Marxist, but his insights are worth a lot and you seem to have misplaced them while getting caught up in occupy-esque fashionable humanism. As for the OP, it's nothing more than a question of economics, and p much all numbers I've seen show that our current standard of living is unsustainable for much longer even under capitalism. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're asking, unless you're sneaking in the Venus project in left sounding language.

Your first paragraph is interesting, and I think I understand what you're saying here about power and the state; but, how does this “hegemonic, creative” view of power translate into everyday practice for someone who is active in radical politics, and a target of those disciplinary aspects of the state that they live under? I'm familiar with only a little bit of Foucault, but I have read about panopticism.

I'm thinking I misread gyrofry's posts, because I now realize what I'm asking is a little different than what the OP was trying to get at. I thought I answered the technological part of the OP's question with some examples that stand in the way of any attempt at technological advancement that “can at best result in a somewhat more equitable redistribution of what contemporary global-imperial-capitalism has produced,” with the assumption being that you want a bunch of Marxists to do this redistributing. I've never heard of the Venus project until now.

EmanuelaOrlandi posted:

wow. gripping discussion yall got going on here lol

http://www.rhizzone.net/forum/topic/2654/

babyhueypnewton posted:

final thought: privilege is a nonsensical concept, it's a liberal bastardization of false consciousness (which is itself a problematic concept but that's a heavy debate), taking the idea that people's consciousness is shaped by their material conditions and applying it to race, sex, sexuality, etc without taking the marxist background explanation of how class consciousness is formed through the technology of capitalism (the organization of the factory forcing workers to realize their common interest and power through collective action) and the relationship between labour and the means of production. instead it discards the scientific concept of proletarian with a faith in all oppressed people to have common interest in overthrowing each others' oppression in alliance, and replaces the helpful concepts of marxism with helpless and all encompassing concepts like "intersectionality" which serve as nothing more for every person in the world to feel some kind of "privilege guilt".

it also confuses a general critique of identity as it is determined on a class level: whiteness, patriarchy, hetero-normativity are all general concepts of power and a liberal moral critique: "check your privilege", "allies", "you don't get to speak about _____" that somehow an individual is morally culpable for his consciousness and can somehow reshape his identity, which itself has been shaped by society and not his own choices. of course no one has ever actually "checked their privilege", it's a polemical statement meant to humiliate and silence and empower the oppressed with a cheap rush of power.

unless someone can explain privilege in a coherent way, let's not just throw it out there as if it's an accepted concept in lf.

counterpoint: youre a sex tourist

swampman posted:

its just a word that got stretched too far. it means three things now. privilege is a special right, privilege is a trait that gives such rights, privilege is the consciousness of people with such traits. if the three were distinctionalized from each other by better terminology we wouldnt be stuck in this conversation today.

but all of these things have problems in themselves, even granting that one is smart enough to blindly combine them into one concept. privilege consciousness has all of the same problems of vulgar false consciousness, in that it's either too vague and explains everything that is not part of what the person speaking at the moment considers "progressive" or too specific and leaves no possible course of action for anyone who is privileged. it fails to have a comprehensive theory of consciousness and in my experience, immediately dismisses Freud as sexist with no real thought

(I need to stress here that despite how it is presented, privilege theory is not shared by all or even most feminism and there are plenty of feminists who engage with Freud/Marx/Nietzsche).

As for the economic/cultural side of privilege, it is usually presented in a series of platitudes like this one:

http://kasamaproject.org/2012/03/25/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack/

without any scientific analysis or dialectical system to understand it. this is fine polemically to confront white people like pictures of starving children in africa can be used to guilt people into supporting redistribution, but once polemic and propaganda replaces science and understand the concept is actively harmful. Especially in a piece like the one I posted, where real analysis is replaced with guilt and self-righteousness.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

GoldenLionTamarin posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
final thought: privilege is a nonsensical concept, it's a liberal bastardization of false consciousness (which is itself a problematic concept but that's a heavy debate), taking the idea that people's consciousness is shaped by their material conditions and applying it to race, sex, sexuality, etc without taking the marxist background explanation of how class consciousness is formed through the technology of capitalism (the organization of the factory forcing workers to realize their common interest and power through collective action) and the relationship between labour and the means of production. instead it discards the scientific concept of proletarian with a faith in all oppressed people to have common interest in overthrowing each others' oppression in alliance, and replaces the helpful concepts of marxism with helpless and all encompassing concepts like "intersectionality" which serve as nothing more for every person in the world to feel some kind of "privilege guilt".

it also confuses a general critique of identity as it is determined on a class level: whiteness, patriarchy, hetero-normativity are all general concepts of power and a liberal moral critique: "check your privilege", "allies", "you don't get to speak about _____" that somehow an individual is morally culpable for his consciousness and can somehow reshape his identity, which itself has been shaped by society and not his own choices. of course no one has ever actually "checked their privilege", it's a polemical statement meant to humiliate and silence and empower the oppressed with a cheap rush of power.

unless someone can explain privilege in a coherent way, let's not just throw it out there as if it's an accepted concept in lf.

counterpoint: youre a sex tourist

I was going to avoid saying this but it was kinda in my head. That Filipina sex worker has an entirely different worldview and set of formative experiences than you BHPN, and I dare say a lot of them involve men being horrible on account of her being a woman, a phenomenon that goes back a lot further than capitalism or feudalism. Characterising the concept of privilege as a tumblr slap fight seems quite dishonest, I believe it’s firmly rooted in the shared experiences of many different types of people.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but you're not actually very knowledgeable or interesting, and repeatedly characterizing my position as "reducing identity to modes of production" shows you are incapable of thinking about these things with any depth. Everyone else ignores you so I figured someone should respond to your constant contrarian puke. also please stop posting about global warming, it's not funny.

Crow posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

pretty much what I'm talking about but of course Zizek is worthless when we actually ask "what is to be done?" because he has already accepted the failure of socialism and the outdatedness of Marx.

oooOOooo

I've defended Zizek multiple times to orthodox marxists, being a bit of a good contrarian because I would like all the lazy Zizekians come out and defend him like in this thread which had the potential to be awesome but instead died:

http://www.rhizzone.net/forum/topic/1003/?page=1

RIP tom and your flippant dismissal of anything that reminds of you of your haunted marxist past

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but you're not actually very knowledgeable or interesting

Hahaha when did I say that I was? I'm not a scholastic type and my knowledge of theory is limited, i wouldn't claim otherwise.

and repeatedly characterizing my position as "reducing identity to modes of production" shows you are incapable of thinking about these things with any depth.

I’m just intrigued by your unshakeable belief in the Correctness of Marxist-Leninism and your contempt for anything that deviates from it, you don't see it much these days.

attempts to create a system separate from privilege (we can say this is the best part of the 60s new-left lifestyle movements) utterly failed to do anything new, in fact they entrenched categories like "homosexual" and "woman" even further.

It might not be to your tastes, but that discourse of identity and tolerance forms the basis of changes that have made it a lot easier for say, gays at school, or women avoiding harassment in the workplace. I realize it’s hardly scientific or even every theoretically consistent but less hostile schools and work places do seem like “something new”.

Anyway, as a show of good faith, you might enjoy this

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/the-make-believe-world-of-david-graeber.html

tpaine posted:

im sorry for abandoning dffo goldnetamarind

Squalid posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

gyrofry posted:

I don't know what the venus project is, but yes as I intended it, it was a question about economics.

When you say "all numbers I've seen show" etc -- this is really kind of what I'm wondering about. Is there some analysis out there that covers this thoroughly?

there are different ways to approach this. ecologically, economically, and politically.

ecologically: global warming, extinction of species, deforestation, overusing land, acidification of the ocean, ozone depletion, and basically overusing and destroying the earth in every conceivable way are all issues that have been well documented. global warming is probably the most severe because it has a compounding effect and has already gone past the point where we could stop it even if there was a worldwide eco-socialist revolution tonight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review (this was in 2006 and obviously nothing was done nor could anything be done under capitalism)

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

this stinks of malthus though, so i usually avoid eco talk unless im trying to point out to a liberal that they are suicidal and living in denial every day.

economically: we already had a thread on the falling rate of profit, and we've had more than enough threads on the 1st world labor aristocracy and neo-colonial system throughout the history of LF. the point here is that the current system is unsustainable and the world shaking changes that are happening to capitalism have only begun to happen. we're still in the re-proletarianization of the 1st world stage, we haven't even seen what comes after that.

politically: NATO has failed in Syria, BRICS is replacing U.S. hegemony for a multi-polar world, the dollar and the euro are crap and the bourgeois economists are incapable of solving anything. latin america is lost, and 30 years of direct political repression of the left has been lost in only a few years of crisis.

sorry I'm speaking so generally and in such grandiose terms, but you're basically asking "what is the structure of the global political-economic system?" which is a big question.



I really just couldn't let this post go, I m sorry but it is such shallow handwaving and it evinces a terrible lack of understanding of environmental issues. It doesn't even address the OPs questions, namely do third wordist theories rely on capitalist assumptions? and could future socialist economies continue to grow their economies without exploiting other peoples?

many of your environmental issues have little or nothing to do with economic growth, biodiversity for example, and look like generic answers somebody would toss off when they have nothing of substance to say. The same goes for your political answers. Economics isnt my specialty but your answers are confined to an analysis of capitalism and leave the question of whether a socialist economy could, or should, resolve these issues unanswered. You havent said anything of substance and merely seem to be parroting some kind of leftist nihilistic gospel of doom without understanding anything you describe.

I'm currently getting a degree in environmental science and would be happy to answer any questions about how environmental problems will effect growth. How they relate to third worldist economics I cant say, although reforestation in the global north has increasex deforestation in places like Indonesia.

Sorry for the typos, posted from my mobile

u mad

Squalid posted:

Yeas im mad i even bothered to skim your weird rambly off topci posts

baby hugo newman has an increadibly complete set of marxian terminology flashcards but his spirit is sick with academic shit. thats why hes convinced of the special role rational thought and rigorous theoretical principles will play in the trials 2 come