slumlord posted:it seems fashionable for leftists to shit on chomsky and zizek but i have never seen or heard one so much as attempt to distance themselves from finkelstein
i emailed norm about maoism last night & he got back to me really fast
I am going to India in a few hours.
Among other things, I will be speaking about my relationship to Maoism.
I wrote something about it a decade ago in an autobiographical sketch, but didn't publish it.
Mao seemed to be building a new society, based on values in which I believed: "Serve the People," "The Chinese people have stood up." It appeared to be a society in which the "wretched of the earth" had real dignity.
Of course, a lot of it was mythological, but some of it was true.
I didn't follow Amin after I ceased being a Maoist. I no longer found his mode of analysis compelling, and heard bad things about the center he ran in Dakar, Senegal, so I sort of tuned him out.
Goethestein posted:jools posted:goatstein remember that time you argued against the labour theory of value by posting a bunch of gibberish from baudrillard you hadn't actually read. good times.
baudrillard was absolutely correct, value doesn't derive from labor. sorry about your globally failed economic system
but baudrillard doesn't really reject the labour element of value production at all, he just argues that marx is wrong about use value because he wasn't pomo enough
Goethestein posted:more generally the man who pulls the trigger, swings the machete, or pulls the lever releasing the gas is always the most culpable because the whole system relies on him. people like to bitch about the people on the top but they lack the ability to do anything without these millions of swine ready to take life for money. leftists spend decades constructing these rambling narratives and schizophrenic hierarchies of power to avoid blaming the triggerman, because that is mean and because he is visible. he is visible in the way that say george bush or ken lay are not, but some leftists refuse to blame even them, making them victims of the system, robbing any human being anywhere of culpability for their actions, which is the real goal; because admitting that human beings from the bottom to the top are deranged sociopathic imbeciles is an unpleasant realization with poor repercussions for their attempts or even their motivations to create a better world
*protests the nuremberg trials*
jools posted:just argues that marx is wrong about use value because he wasn't pomo enough
lol
jools posted:Goethestein posted:more generally the man who pulls the trigger, swings the machete, or pulls the lever releasing the gas is always the most culpable because the whole system relies on him. people like to bitch about the people on the top but they lack the ability to do anything without these millions of swine ready to take life for money. leftists spend decades constructing these rambling narratives and schizophrenic hierarchies of power to avoid blaming the triggerman, because that is mean and because he is visible. he is visible in the way that say george bush or ken lay are not, but some leftists refuse to blame even them, making them victims of the system, robbing any human being anywhere of culpability for their actions, which is the real goal; because admitting that human beings from the bottom to the top are deranged sociopathic imbeciles is an unpleasant realization with poor repercussions for their attempts or even their motivations to create a better world
*protests the nuremberg trials*
from a strictly pragmatic perspective, punishing leadership is more feasible and politically popular than executing tens of thousands of german soldiers
Ask not what Marxism can do for you, but how many Jews you can kill for your country.
Goethestein posted:jools posted:Goethestein posted:more generally the man who pulls the trigger, swings the machete, or pulls the lever releasing the gas is always the most culpable because the whole system relies on him. people like to bitch about the people on the top but they lack the ability to do anything without these millions of swine ready to take life for money. leftists spend decades constructing these rambling narratives and schizophrenic hierarchies of power to avoid blaming the triggerman, because that is mean and because he is visible. he is visible in the way that say george bush or ken lay are not, but some leftists refuse to blame even them, making them victims of the system, robbing any human being anywhere of culpability for their actions, which is the real goal; because admitting that human beings from the bottom to the top are deranged sociopathic imbeciles is an unpleasant realization with poor repercussions for their attempts or even their motivations to create a better world
*protests the nuremberg trials*
from a strictly pragmatic perspective, punishing leadership is more feasible and politically popular than executing tens of thousands of german soldiers
hmm, not really, the view that the entire german people were culpable was official policy for a while, the political pragmatism was more in relation to halting denazification in order to beat the reds
jools posted:Goethestein posted:jools posted:Goethestein posted:more generally the man who pulls the trigger, swings the machete, or pulls the lever releasing the gas is always the most culpable because the whole system relies on him. people like to bitch about the people on the top but they lack the ability to do anything without these millions of swine ready to take life for money. leftists spend decades constructing these rambling narratives and schizophrenic hierarchies of power to avoid blaming the triggerman, because that is mean and because he is visible. he is visible in the way that say george bush or ken lay are not, but some leftists refuse to blame even them, making them victims of the system, robbing any human being anywhere of culpability for their actions, which is the real goal; because admitting that human beings from the bottom to the top are deranged sociopathic imbeciles is an unpleasant realization with poor repercussions for their attempts or even their motivations to create a better world
*protests the nuremberg trials*
from a strictly pragmatic perspective, punishing leadership is more feasible and politically popular than executing tens of thousands of german soldiers
hmm, not really, the view that the entire german people were culpable was official policy for a while, the political pragmatism was more in relation to halting denazification in order to beat the reds
that doesn't actually dispute the point at all. which is easier, trying and executing 100 people or 100,000
pomo
Goethestein posted:jools posted:Goethestein posted:jools posted:Goethestein posted:more generally the man who pulls the trigger, swings the machete, or pulls the lever releasing the gas is always the most culpable because the whole system relies on him. people like to bitch about the people on the top but they lack the ability to do anything without these millions of swine ready to take life for money. leftists spend decades constructing these rambling narratives and schizophrenic hierarchies of power to avoid blaming the triggerman, because that is mean and because he is visible. he is visible in the way that say george bush or ken lay are not, but some leftists refuse to blame even them, making them victims of the system, robbing any human being anywhere of culpability for their actions, which is the real goal; because admitting that human beings from the bottom to the top are deranged sociopathic imbeciles is an unpleasant realization with poor repercussions for their attempts or even their motivations to create a better world
*protests the nuremberg trials*
from a strictly pragmatic perspective, punishing leadership is more feasible and politically popular than executing tens of thousands of german soldiers
hmm, not really, the view that the entire german people were culpable was official policy for a while, the political pragmatism was more in relation to halting denazification in order to beat the reds
that doesn't actually dispute the point at all. which is easier, trying and executing 100 people or 100,000
well they already had the facilities for the latter
gyrofry posted:i like how 'pomo' looks like 'porno'. visually. as a word.
pomo
signifier and signified.
gyrofry posted:i like how 'pomo' looks like 'porno'. visually. as a word.
pomo
it doesnt, its just bad kerning/keming in arial
deadken posted:surely the refutation of dialectics itself has a place in the dialectic conception of the world
In fact, I haven't refuted dialectics, or dialectical materialism.
In order to do that, I would have show it was false.
What I have shown is that it is far too vague and confused for anyone to be able to say whether or not it is false (or true). It doesn't make it that far.
So, there is no such thing as 'the dialectical conception of the world' any more than there is such a thing as the cube root of an apple, or off-side in chess.
swirlsofhistory posted:
I can tell!
Actually, that was supposed to be a reply to gyrofry!
Rosa_Lichtenstein posted:deadken posted:surely the refutation of dialectics itself has a place in the dialectic conception of the world
In fact, I haven't refuted dialectics, or dialectical materialism.
In order to do that, I would have show it was false.
What I have shown is that it is far too vague and confused for anyone to be able to say whether or not it is false (or true). It doesn't make it that far.
So, there is no such thing as 'the dialectical conception of the world' any more than there is such a thing as the cube root of an apple, or off-side in chess.
Yeah I agree with this.
babyfinland posted:Yeah I agree with this.
When you really think about it,
