/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Wait… I thought turning it into a cult was the goal. How else would someone like Bob Avakian get laid?

Many religions have built in mechniacs to prevent tainting from outside sources

>>475019
Tell me more about Jim Jones Thought.

what about david north

>>475019
I was reading about Jim Jones today at work and didn't realize that the large majority of his followers were african americans. He also really liked the soviets which is interesting for a religious socialist.

>>475042
Every time I see someone from WSWS in interviews, I imagine David North sitting behind them just off camera with a club in his hand, waiting to strike them if they deviate at all from party doctrine.

It's called democracy

In fact you would have to educate the masses with communist propaganda to prevent revisionism the same way neolibs brainwash their citizens into fighting for their own exploitation. So you should be asking what works in a cult and what does not and apply that to communist thinking.

>>475043
he wasn't religious he just used christianity opportunistically, I listen to a few of his sermons and many of them are humanistic and are contrary to basic doctrines of christianity vwhereas liberation theology integrates both. He said that the people that stayed with him at the commune were either atheists or liberal Christians who'd believe anything he'd say.

>>475060
>you would have to educate the masses with communist propaganda to prevent revisionism the same way neolibs brainwash their citizens into fighting for their own exploitation.
The increasing levels of soft-censorship like anti-social-canceling as well as traditional hard-censorship indicate that the neoliberal brainwashing methods have become less effective.

I think we have to think this over. The Neoliberals are attacking independent journalists. I think that's a ideological value judgement on their part, we ought not ignore it. If it doesn't work for them maybe we should lean into it. If we build our communist system with strong protections and robust funding mechanisms for independent journalism, we might get a complex sprawling self-generating ideological landscape, that is much less susceptible to outside subversion from media-power of outside capitalist-powers as well as internal subversion from cia color revolution shenanigans. Think about it, if we had a thousand wiki-leaks, we'd have a news landscape that would be like the people's intelligence agency. Again the neo-libs made an ideological value judgement when they jailed Assange. And they're telling us that they have nothing that could counter something like that.

The other part about neo-liberal ideology brainwashing is that most people probably don't believe it. Zizek (whose positions on geo-politics are admittedly terrible) none the less has valuable insights into ideology. He says that people don't need to believe in ideology for it to function, and that in fact it works better if they don't. He's very verbose in his explanations but he describes it as something like a common reference scheme, where it's enough if people can understand what is expected of them.

I think we do need the common reference scheme but we can dispense with all the extra cognitive clutter that is usually attached to it. We'll build a state apparatus that produces all the state services, but we'll just give people a user manual that describes how they can get stuff out of it. Basically people are going to try to game the system, regardless what the system is, so we might as well roll with it.

Despite all of this we should continue the Marxist theoretical work of advancing materialist thought, you do need a consistent world view to design working systems. There might be no need to indoctrinate the masses. You just have to make it very accessible so that it reaches all the people who would find it interesting. Generating an intellectual sphere probably isn't a problem, as long as it doesn't turn into an exclusive club and remains very open to the masses.

I think we should take inspiration from Cockshott's work, all his political and economic strategies involve setting up systems that have inherent desirable systemic tendencies.

>>475093
where it's enough if people can understand what is expected of them.

thats called social contract that locke invented / described

basically you just buy votes / power witn iphones

>>475095
government openly bribes the retarded

(and retarded are already 90 %)

>>475095
Hm, maybe i shouldn't have tried to condense Zizek's ideology analysis into 1 sentence. Locke's social contracts are downstream from a shared ideological framework. I was talking about what people need to have in their heads before they can negotiate a contract.

Leftism is a cult. A cult does not necessarily have a pejorative meaning. Cultism and ritual was inherent to everything the political left entailed, because what it espoused was either a new religion or a drastic reform of religious institutions, and usually institutions at the base of society. It is especially inherent to any form of socialism.

I'm guessing the real question is how you can not turn into an echo chamber death cult controlled by CIA, like most new religious movements and quasi-communist sects which turn into degenerate hubs. That's not easy at this point in human history, because the left constitutionally is devoid of any philosophy that allows it to be politically independent of the state. The world where the state could be questioned with any seriousness is gone, probably forever or close enough to forever for our purposes. For anything the historical left could actually attain, they already won it. They got their institutions enshrined in law, and it turns out this actually sucks for the people and is anathema to democratic society or anything we would have wanted. The left sects then twist their brains into pretzels trying to square that circle, instead of looking at what it was the people wanted in the first place. The people have always been willing to say to anyone who would listen what they wanted, and it wasn't equality or justice or philosophy. They wanted the aristocracy gone, and they didn't care how it was done or how to keep such a world. They just hated the masters that much, and the masters hated them.

Really though, if you're a leftist organization and you like living, you wouldn't keep co-opting and cajoling the people, nor would you try to insist that you're actually just like them, because you're not and you never will be. If I were in a leftist org and considered my political position at the moment, and I weren't a grifter looking to join the NGO game, I'd do what a few brave souls are trying to do - defend the people, feed the people, do everything to end the institutional invasion of their lives. Your organization should not try to be a mass party at this stage of history. Electoral politics is worse than dead. You would instead look to the peoples' actual wants and needs like security, and understand that their security entails your security. They would see you as a friend if you weren't always trying to cajole or betray them.

In other words, the left seriously needs to reconsider its core philosophies if it wants to be relevant, instead of relitigating and recapitulating the past endlessly. The Germanic philosophy is a demonstrated failure, and so Marx is useful as a historical artifact - an important artifact to explain why we are here, which most people liberals included will learn in an actual education, but it does not describe the present situation. If you understood Marx's method, he would not prescribe that this is the way it works now and forever, and expected successors to have actual brains. They did for a while, but once they got what they wanted, they turned viciously against the people, and that was inherent in Marx.

>>475123
behead idealists

>>475122
that happens to all empires (and even states)

yo'd like to see america in 20 years

empire on average last 5 generations

(not something i invented but just science and data/research)
(and even retarded old books say the same)

>>475129
5 gens of rulers to be precise


you don't see any empires as old as time (mayybe pony fuckers but im unsure)

>>475123
>so Marx is useful as a historical artifact
Marx will be relevant until class-society is overcome

>>475129
>empire on average last 5 generations
That seems to be true, but is throwing empires from different modes of productions into the same basket really useful ?

Would it not be more useful to compare specifically all capitalist empires, to make our predictions more accurate ?

>>475132
You sound like a faggot
>muh capitalism
>psuedo-intellectual garbage

>>475132
I never said Marx was irrelevant, but it is very clear that this would never "abolish class society". The result of Marx's theory was to make class society effectively permanent and unchangeable, except as a fantastical unicorn. The aims of the lower classes were always to eliminate the aristocracy and its followers outright, not claim equality with their value system in a way that demands abasement to an aristocrat's political thought. If there is a movement to eliminate class distinctions in the genuine sense, it would be something completely different from what was allowed to happen, and no political theory is allowed to suggest such a thing is even a possibility, unless the abolition of classes is the total and repeated extermination of any threat to aristocracy, such that subordinated classes are philosophically invisible.

Marx would be relevant for understanding why it did turn out this way, but it was never the inexorable course of history, and hostility towards the class system is not a monopoly of Marx. This is one of their things they do to jump in front of anything that would actually ask questions in the modern period, when they form political parties. At core, Marx's method is one of critique. It can be repurposed for anything, and so the fascists are very aware of Marx's thinking and its origins, as are the liberals who defended against and co-opted Marxist movements. In theory the workers could take Marx's thinking and adapt it to their purpose - that was the expectation - but nothing of the sort happened, and whenever it looked like this would actually happen, the leadership of "the real movement" neutralized such interlopers. They weren't part of the plan or the world to come.

>>475049
>It's called democracy
This.

The problem is two-fold: First, the ideological component. Marxism works backwards from the Paradise Lost (primitive communism), just like so many other religions, hence inherent dogmatism that is a fertile soil for the emergence of various cults. The idea of the "golden age", of a "harmonious past", is a pretty universal human concept that is reflected in various religious systems. So Marxism is pretty typical in this regard.

Second, the functional component. Any political organization can be roughly divided into "full-timers" and "part-timers". Full-timers have an inherent tendency to get entrenched in their positions, just as any full-time professional has a tendency to get entrenched in his field. From this, various groups of full-timers congregate around their own leaders in the process of organizational struggle, and they use ideology as their weapon against other groups and as a means to control part-timers. If one of such groups wins and purges others - you basically have a cult, usually with a variation of the "Great Leader" element to maintain group cohesion.

So cult has nothing to do with the size of the group, and everything to do with the ideological and organizational structure of the group. Ruling parties in ML states are a classical example of cults, and they had membership in the millions.

>>475175
>Marxism works backwards from the Paradise Lost (primitive communism), just like so many other religions, hence inherent dogmatism that is a fertile soil for the emergence of various cults. The idea of the "golden age", of a "harmonious past", is a pretty universal human concept that is reflected in various religious systems. So Marxism is pretty typical in this regard.
What in the actual fuck are you babbling about?

>>475176
Feigning ignorance is the last leg the leftist has to stand on, yet also ironically the most accurate representation of their thought process

>>475175
take meds

in america millions go to mcdonalds and have / had stocks or at least think of them selfs as some sort of rich in ten years

they also basically worship money

u know how many banks ussr had ? one

>>475176
I'm "babbling about" that dumbfuck leftoids ASSUME communism.

>assume definition: 1. to take as granted or true

>>475235
It looks more like you're the one making strange moronic assumptions about Marxism.

>>475287
so you don't believe that history progresses towards communism?

>>475298
We won't know that until it happens.

>>475298
>>475300
Societies evolve toward whatever form is most capable of dominating/influencing other societies, whether through violence , finance, or guile.

>>475300
Nice revisionism kek.

The concept of communism is literally a central focal point of communist theory (duh).

Without communism, Marxism as a revolutionary theory just doesn't work.

>>475305
Kek. I can't tell if this is supposed to be a defense of Marxism or a criticism

>>475304
>Societies evolve toward whatever form is most capable of dominating/influencing other societies, whether through violence , finance, or guile.
that's not a marxist position

you might be some nazoid fellow traveler or something kek?

>>475307
It's a critique, dumbfuck.

Because communism doesn't follow from the marxist theory kek. That's why marxoids need "dialectical logic" to "prove" that it does kek.

>>475309
well, your position is basic ass nazoid position kek

"clash of civilizations/races/nations" and all that drivel

tired old boring shit, really

>>475310
Aw, gotcha… And actually agree.

Nothing in historical materialism (/Marxist theory) as a method of historical analysis suggests that a communist class/stateless society is feasible

That was just Marx's Rousseaun fever dream (at best) and a nifty consequencialist justification of anything (at worst).

>>475311
Ya, not as compelling as the slave-morality scifi fanfic that is leftist 'marxism'.

Certainly more alligned with reality though

>>475312
>That was just Marx's Rousseaun fever dream (at best) and a nifty consequencialist justification of anything (at worst).
Communism as an idea predates Marx. It was born out of the class conflict, as a search for alternative. Marx just took this idea and integrated it into his theory of history.

>Certainly more alligned with reality though
not really

societies are not homogeneous, they don't have their own "interests"

>>475314
You missed the 'Rousseaun' part…

But ya, utopian ideas predate Marx. We finally agree.

>societies are not homogeneous, they don't have their own "interests"
Strawman

>>475315
>Strawman
how so? you're basically saying that all people in a particular society have a common interest to dominate other societies

which is not true

>>475318
Read this again
<Societies evolve toward whatever form is most capable of dominating/influencing other societies, whether through violence , finance, or guile.

>>475319
>Societies evolve toward whatever form is most capable of dominating/influencing other societies
I don't understand the mechanisms of this evolution.

If it's not interests that people can act upon, then what?

>>475323
<Societies evolve toward the most adaptive forms in a competitive environment
>Ya, but what about individuals?
It would help if we were talking about the same thing.

Really, Comrade DK, you really need to smoke less weed

>>475324
yes, society comes down to individuals

just like your mom's dildo comes down to atoms lol

>>475327
As you undoubtedly know, you can understand how to use a dildo and what it feels like in your butt without understanding that it's made up of atoms

>>475093
an army of investigative reporters armed with typewriters (or perhaps more modern tools, but typewriters have that vintage charm) ready to take on the capitalist behemoth. They'll expose every capitalist conspiracy, unearth every hidden agenda, and, of course, wear stylish trench coats while doing so.

Now, the idea of strong protections and robust funding mechanisms for independent journalism is positively revolutionary. It's as if you're suggesting we build an impervious wall around truth, a wall so high that even the most agile of spin doctors can't scale it. We'll have fact-checkers armed with red pens and the unyielding resolve to correct any misinformation, regardless of the source.

And the notion of a thousand Wiki-Leaks clones? Oh, what a glorious thought! It's like creating a parallel universe where the truth flows like a never-ending river. But remember, with great leaks come great responsibility. Our news landscape would indeed be akin to the people's intelligence agency, but we must ensure our intelligence is used wisely and not for mere amusement.

>>475339
your mom's dildo stays the same tho

society changes

to understand this change you need a more detailed model of the dildo