The specter that still haunts capitalism

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

If a system isn't working for people - if it isn't providing them with a decent life, as we all are entitled to (if you believe we should have civilization is basically what that comes down to... if not then )... then the system needs to go. The solution wasn't for slaves to try to buy their freedom and become slaveholders. The solution wasn't for Chinese peasants to try like hell to become a warlord and then emperor. When a system becomes a fetter on human development, it needs to go.

So if you want to say that working people are failures... you need to say the same about other exploited classes throughout history. What is a failure is the system that can't generate a decent life for everyone (we're not even talking about people who refuse to work. We're talking about people who work 40+ hours a week for fukk's sake), and can only guarantee war, constant economic crises (it is 2015. The ONLY thing that should be causing an economic crisis is some sort of natural disaster. Not some clown ass traders and bankers fukking up the economy), and increasing repression.

bankers only get shyt when they lose money...not when they make it.

It seems you don't acknowledge the role bankers play in a debt-based society.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

In a socialist system, there is no unemployment. So there is no need for hand outs to the able bodied. Someone who wishes to never work should favor social democracy, not socialism.

Socialism reduces time spent working by employing more and shortening hours, in addition to collective works like trash collection and road repair that often go undone in capitalist systems. In a more modern age, environmental efforts as well will enable millions to contribute and better their world.

Road work and trash collection are OFTEN state/government run unless there are problems in maintaining access due to geographic limitations or outright funding.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Both fair points.

So let's keep going with this. Let's say everyone is the US agrees to go "socialism" starting tmrw, what does that look like in your opinion?

How are decisions made? Who is in charge of distributing resources?

I mean, that is a completely ahistorical and contrived scenario - "everyone" meaning the entire working class or including the bourgeoisie? And because reality is created through the course of events and struggle, my projections with regards to specifics would be meaningless. Further, there are many hypothesized forms of organization with regards to your questions on who makes decisions and how resources are distributed. Essentially, those are things that have to be decided by the working class itself in the course of experience and people's preferences.

Not to mention, socialism has to be a global development -- but, if it started in the U.S., that would rock the very foundations of capitalism as the U.S. is the capital of capital ()... the repercussions in the rest of the world after something like that are unpredictable. It would be an amazing inspiration to and opportunity for the working classes in other countries.

I am personally interested in syndicalism, council communism, and De Leonism lately. Basically I identify as a Libertarian Marxist. I lean towards syndicalism as a form of organization but am open to some form of market socialism consisting of worker-owned cooperatives. I am not necessarily opposed to markets.

I'd imagine there would be some parallel institutions, for labor/production and community/social interests - by that I mean that different bodies have to interlock so that there is communication of needs, grievances, etc. Democracy would be infused from the workplace up to the industrial congress and from the neighborhood block up to the highest levels. Direct democracy where possible and transparent representation where necessary (representatives are instantly recallable at all levels).

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

This ether... @Ill @Domingo Halliburton @DEAD7 @LeyeT @tmonster @DarkSkinSamurai @Tha Sircus @Kid McNamara @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! @¢apitali$t Migraine @brick james @88m3 @Mephistopheles @Broke Wave @Asantehene @The Real @Camile.Bidan @AJaRuleStan @BarNone @Futuristic Eskimo @Liu Kang @ExodusNirvana @lotuseater80 @the cac mamba @Mr. Somebody @Broletariat @Type Username Here @biscuitsnbangers @No_bammer_weed @Misanthrope @mbewane @theworldismine13 @Din0can @Madvillain


3 Things I Learned From Being A Marxist

• 
  
  A specter was haunting the dorm halls: the specter of Marxism. And like many other college kids, it haunted me for my entire college career.
  
  Thankfully, I have since been exorcised of the red spirit, and now can only look with shame at the cringe-inducing beliefs and attitudes I once held. It was like I was a different person back then.
  
  Despite this embarrassment however, I did gain some valuable insight during my dance with the dialectic. For starters, I experienced what it was like to live inside the mind of a Leftist (cue shuddering), in all of its divisive, dogmatic, and excuse-making stupor.
  
  Scary, yes. But also educational.
  
  It allowed me to peer not only into myself, but also into the general psychological state of unfulfilled and frustrated men. It allowed me to witness firsthand why I and others could be so susceptible to a mass movement like Marxism.
  
  I am still sometimes haunted by the ghosts (or specters) of communist past, but like Scrooge’s encounter with phantoms, they also taught me some unforgettable lessons:
  
  1. Mass Movements Make You Lazy
  
  I honestly wasn’t lazy before I was drawn under the red banner. After I entered the fold however, I started basing my self-esteem not on my personal accomplishments, as many psychologists suggest we should, but rather on identification with a belief.
  
  Instead of going out and taking risks to achieve concrete goals (e.g. making money, getting laid, writing, working out, etc.), I got my daily dose of endorphins by raising my fist in solidarity with my ideological comrades. It was nice to be all snug in my dorm room draped in a swarm of socialist paperbacks, and having a great sense of self-worth because I could do something like debunk Trotsky’s reactionary views on internationalism. I was happy because I was “right.”
  
  After all, it was much easier to raise a fist in front of a protest sign than it was to raise a barbell at a gym.
  
  Losing myself in a larger egalitarian identity, like the Working Class, helped mask my lack of accomplishments and confidence. My “achievements” as a Marxist amounted to possessing an impressive bookshelf of revolutionary literature and having my name on a party’s membership roster. I was able to shift the personal burden of ambition onto the collective.
  
  As the witty and biting Eric Hoffer pointed out in The True Believer, “We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility.” We do it with “a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority” (31-33).
  
  By losing myself in the masses I soothed myself and became lazy. The masses became the opiate of the masses.
  
  2. Most Ideologies Make You Resentful
  
  
  In an all-encompassing worldview like Marxism, everything in life can be explained by its doctrine. For me, the doctrine was the class struggle dialectic.
  
  Didn’t have money? It was because of the exploitative wealthy. Didn’t have confidence? It was because of my monotonous and soul-crushing Working Class upbringing. Received a low grade in school? It was because my boss made me work the day before the test.
  
  Nothing could ever be my fault or responsibility. The capitalists were the main culprits behind everything. And yes I mean everything.
  
  (During the winter, I even implicated the plutocrats in ruining my day with snow. Theywere behind climate change after all.)
  
  I couldn’t look at anything without my Das Kapital goggles. No matter where I turned I always saw the iron-fisted, suited-and-booted billionaire screwing me over. The rich were my enemy, and their overthrow became the focus of my life.
  
  It made me concentrate on destroying my oppressors instead of improving myself. And it felt so good. Fantasizing about crushing the capitalist menace gave me a rush, and it felt even better when I got to shout at CEOs during protests. It was the same guilty pleasure I had experienced in high school when I saw the girlfriend-stealing jock accidentally drop his books all over the floor.
  
  But seeing a high school alpha embarrass himself didn’t get me laid. And flinging epithets at corporate titans didn’t make me rich.
  
  I was too busy trying to pull down my enemy instead of trying to lift up myself. All my energy and focus went towards destruction of others rather than construction of self. Or, to paraphrase a Chinese proverb, I was cutting my foot to fit the shoe, when I should have been going out and earning enough to buy a bigger shoe.
  
  3. Too Much Politics Keeps You From Enjoying Life
  
  
  A political faith charms and distracts through two primary ways: duty and guilt. As a disciple of the infamous bearded economist, I was a victim of both.
  
  Being born in the First World, I came prepackaged with tremendous privilege, as well as an accompanying obligation to feel guilty about said privilege. My Marxism magnified this guilt, to the point where it was even more conscience-searing than Original Sin. And this is coming from someone who went to Catholic school from K-12.
  
  How could I enjoy my morning coffee while the global majority lived in squalor? How could I go on a laughter-filled bar crawl through Manhattan with my best friends when I could be building revolution instead? Indeed, how could I even buy my clothing and shoes when they were manufactured by sleepless child laborers in Bangladesh?
  
  It was my duty to liberate the proletariat. But I was shirking my duty by having fun.
  
  Not even time with my family was exempt from the fog of guilt. Some people don’t even have families, so it would be the grossest act of elitism to relish in my privilege. How dare I waste time with such a bourgeois construct.
  
  And then there were all the downtrodden I was completely unaware of. I constantly read the news to make sure I knew about everyone who was oppressed, so that I could sour my soul and make sure I wasn’t too happy. If I was enjoying life too much, it was a sign that I was abandoning my revolutionary obligation.
  
  It was my duty to feel guilty. Life became part of the background. It became something I simply went through, not something I enjoyed. Family and friends, memories and moments; they were all part of the background.
  
  Such a penitential and life-denying mode of existence is no way to live. I concur with Emerson: “I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”
  
  The Takeaway
  This trip down Leftist lane doesn’t vindicate conservatives. All worldviews have their enabling, resentful, and life-denying aspects. Don’t let them get the best of you.
  
  You can still become lazy by losing yourself in a larger identity, whether the identity is the Working Class, the church, the white race, MGTOW, or the feminist sisterhood.
  
  And no one is exempt from having his ideology blind him to the beauties of life, be he Leninist or Libertarian. Do not let an abstract political cobweb bind you on your pilgrimage through life. If I accomplished anything in my socialist days, it was learning this simple lesson.
  
  And I didn’t accomplish much during those days, so that’s saying something.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

you call this dude out on something and he calls it "ahistorical"

Fam, you're not entitled to your own facts here

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

the U.S. is the capital of capital ()...

Not know the difference between capitOl and capitAl brehs

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I mean, that is a completely ahistorical and contrived scenario - "everyone" meaning the entire working class or including the bourgeoisie? And because reality is created through the course of events and struggle, my projections with regards to specifics would be meaningless. Further, there are many hypothesized forms of organization with regards to your questions on who makes decisions and how resources are distributed. Essentially, those are things that have to be decided by the working class itself in the course of experience and people's preferences.

Not to mention, socialism has to be a global development -- but, if it started in the U.S., that would rock the very foundations of capitalism as the U.S. is the capital of capital ()... the repercussions in the rest of the world after something like that are unpredictable. It would be an amazing inspiration to and opportunity for the working classes in other countries.

I am personally interested in syndicalism, council communism, and De Leonism lately. Basically I identify as a Libertarian Marxist. I lean towards syndicalism as a form of organization but am open to some form of market socialism consisting of worker-owned cooperatives. I am not necessarily opposed to markets.

I'd imagine there would be some parallel institutions, for labor/production and community/social interests - by that I mean that different bodies have to interlock so that there is communication of needs, grievances, etc. Democracy would be infused from the workplace up to the industrial congress and from the neighborhood block up to the highest levels. Direct democracy where possible and transparent representation where necessary (representatives are instantly recallable at all levels).

Oh ok, so nothing but pie in the sky.

People would just "make organizations" to "fix problems"

How's that different from what we have?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I said that to illustrate a point u mfn moron. I didn't actually go to night school and get a cert in medical billing. I was referring to nikkas n bytches who get the fukk off they ass and do something rather than sit up and hope some shythead tosses out the whole system so they can have what Tyrone down the block has. U know good and goddamn well fast food work is not worth $15 an hour, ur just desperately trying not to sound like a complete goddamn idiot who has embraced an ideology created for dirty ass Bolivian tin miners and cotton growers and not u and ur fukk ass friends playing Draft Kings on ur Iphones during ur smoke break at Panda Express.

That minimum wage law is the dumbest goddamn thing to happen in decades and I could never be mad about idiotic socialist advances in this country. The shyt is designed not to fukking work. The capitalist system is in place to the point where the algorithms move the needles forward to neutralize that something for nothing bullshyt. It's why GOP a$$holes are either disingenuous or reactionary idiots when they get upset over dumb shyt like EBT benefits. These are instruments that are designed to take the less desirables out of the rat race.

Talk sum degrading, motherfukker, living on the goddamn govt tit is degrading as fukk. It is fukking disgusting to see a grown ass man sitting here saying that nikkas should be getting handouts from the state rather than working to build something on their own that they rightfully own. Workers getting exploited? bytch, that's why u don't have to do the goddamn job if u don't want to, and the government will subsidize big ass chunks of ur advanced education if u want something more. This shyt is made to encourage nikkas to be great, not chain them to some ol bullshyt n convince em that's all there is to life.

Again, u are applying an ideology made for motherfukkers engaged in back breaking slave labor in horrible 3rd world shytholes to the United States, the richest goddamn mfn country in the world, where nikkas on disability with food stamps get so fat they gotta use an electronic wheelchair to go to the store in the middle of the day and buy more fukking food. That's why u sound dumb as fukk, ur the goddamn enemy of the very people socialism was designed to help. They fukking despise u, and rightfully so. U have every mfn tool at ur disposal to become a goddamn boss but u wanna help idiots drink the Kool Aid and believe that ridiculously jerk off stupid shyt like a $15 minimum wage is totally applicable without any kind of negative economic blowback on themselves.

I talk cash shyt cuz I'm in the hood daily, surrounded by somethin for nothin nikkas with they hand and they chest out. Then cocksuckers keep takin losses n wanna be mad at somebody. Man, fukk from around me with that little boy shyt. I don't walk around with my hand out for shyt, n if I put something in another nikka hand, I expect to be paid back according to the terms that we discussed, no bullshyt.

I see dumb nikkas all fukkin day robbin goddamn loud packs n shyt, I'm like, u fukking idiot, sign up for school and go to class n get that money and fukkin be something. Get tf off ur mom couch. nikkas rubbin they hands together hopin to bump the mfn minimum wage up 100% cuz they too lazy to get off they ass n get some training for something feasible that can help em be successful in this country. In this first world of all the first worlds, this capitalistic Amerikkka, u can start out a worker and become a boss. In some fakkit socialist handout shyt, u just a worker, even if u a boss with boss abilities, ur given the same chicken shyt wage as a worker. The minimum wage is not made for people to sustain themselves on. It is either supplemental income or for people in school or people with other jobs as well.

A nikka can't have what I have doin the fukk shyt that he do, he gon have to maneuver himself into position to eat what I eat, cuz when I was eatin frozen burritos n wanted steak I had to do what I had to do to get it. Not try to overthrow the entire goddamn system to make me feel better about my unskilled worker ass.

we need you to post more

 

[ill]

3 Things I Learned From Being A Marxist

Brought me back to freshmen year in college. Article is 100% on point.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Brought me back to freshmen year in college. Article is 100% on point.

Fantastic contribution to the thread

Spoiler: Spoiler

fukking clown

 

[ill]

Fantastic contribution to the thread

Spoiler: Spoiler

fukking clown

I got tagged and replied. What are you so salty about?

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

www.returnofkings.com

LOOK AT THIS REDDIT "MEN'S RIGHTS" BULLshyt, BREHS! @Mephistopheles @The Real @88m3

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

http://www.returnofkings.com/69592/why-christianity-is-not-an-enemy-of-neomasculinity\

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[88m3]

LOOK AT THIS REDDIT "MEN'S RIGHTS" BULLshyt, BREHS! @Mephistopheles @The Real @88m3

 

[¢apitali$t Migraine]

we need you to post more

Bro, mfers don't live in the world, man. They retreat into ideologies instead of finding the proper peg to fit into the hole. And the same cats thinking we on some sociopathic shyt are the people who can find a cause strong enough to latch onto that will justify spilling the blood of its enemies. They don't realize that sociopathy is not only the one thing that prevents a socialist utopia, it is the driving force behind it.

Charismatic svengalis seducing a downtrodden populace into accepting an ideology reeking of unrealistic bullshyt. It's only able to be induced once the subjects are stripped of their identities to be absorbed into the mass. That happens by weaponizing the ideology to blow holes in the subject's persona that doesn't agree with the svengali's idea of a desirable follower. shyt, look at all this "worker" nonsense. One can simply peruse the classifieds or indeed or craigslist and see a multitude of different vocations available. To toss them all together under the banner of "worker" is disingenuous as fukk.

I believe in American exceptionalism wholeheartedly. Because I am an American. I'm not an Afrikan, or a world citizen, or a worker, or a traveler or whatev tf a mf thinks they are. I live in America and have no plans of moving. I speak an American dialect of English and have no plans of seriously learning another language any time soon. These are two simple facts that make it totally counterproductive to assist a foreign entity in any activity that could threaten the best interests of this country as a whole.

I give all sorts of ideas on how I think ppl can achieve their goals, even if their goals are philosophically opposed to my world view ie suggesting black nationalists appeal to the United Nations to make an effective attempt at curtailing police brutality in America. I can do this because I know that most ppl just want to vent and complain and appear to be something rather than actually factually pterodactylly be something.

That's the American way, to achieve so much economic prosperity that superprivileged citizen travel through a logical fallacy wormhole to a zone where they are downtrodden and oppressed. It's easier than realizing ur a lazy delusionally grandiose unskilled worker a$$hole who attaches ur ego to any cause or conflict that makes u feel the endorphins of "I am useful" rush thru ur little veins. If I'm a father to the fatherless, I am the alcoholic, abusive stepfather that occasionally touches his 16 year old stepdaughters to emotionally scar them in retaliation for some perceived slight by their mother. But I occasionally take everyone out for dinner at Golden Corral so things even out.