commiewithoutorgans
@commiewithoutorgans@hexbear.net
- Comment on Banksy Encourages Fans to Shoplift From Guess Since Company 'Helped Themselves to My Artwork Without Asking’ 1 year ago:
- Comment on Banksy Encourages Fans to Shoplift From Guess Since Company 'Helped Themselves to My Artwork Without Asking’ 1 year ago:
Damn nice bit, I had to read 3 times before I decided it was a bit
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
To add on here, the fact that liberalism is a bankrupt ideology which is fully represented by the US including its worst aspects can really not be shown in a comment in such a thread. Domenico Losurdo, in one of my favorite books ever, spends hundreds of pages detailing this in “Liberalism: A Counter History.”
A much more easily digested but still incomplete essay can be found here: redsails.org/between-liberty-and-slavery/
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Not really disagreeing with the other comrade there, but more adding for clarity: the word “authoritarianism” seems to attempt to distinguish some state (all of which are entirely defined by the fact that they have authority over the land/people to utilize violence in implementing the state’s dictates/laws) utilizing it’s authority vs not utilizing it, but the claim we make is that this distinction is meaningless and undermines itself always.
The fact that is that we can’t blow up pipelines because of property rights or else we will have violence done to us (put in prison, or killed if resisting that). This is authority over us. Chinese companies are not allowed to escape regulations within China without significant punishments (see the death penalties for CEOs who break environmental, finance, or labor laws). This is authority over them. These 2 examples are only distinct in who has the authority and who is prioritized in the interaction. But 1 is called authoritarianism and the other isn’t. Or compare: in the US, police who hurt journalists, imprisoned them, and saw absolutely no authority punish them vs the USSR, where those who has collaborated with the Nazi’s in WW2 were punished by being placed in a penal colony in Siberia to work in a mine. Again, the only real difference in authority is for whom and against whom.
I for one would prefer a world where oil company’s property rights were not protected by any authority until astonishingly large changes were to be made for the protection of our environment, and I see the interests of ONLY the capitalist class represented in that authority. Most cases where authority is utilized can be easily tied to the direct interests of a group of people. When a group of people have shared interests based in the basic structure of our economy (private property rights and the ability to profit being the basis here mostly, as well as the ability to sell your labor power as a worker), we call that a class. This is why we say that authority is always performed in the interests of a class (because all actions and decisions of the state either align with or against those interests, even if mostly tangentially or aligned with multiple at once).
This all just has very little to do with any understanding of democracy. The initial term of democracy was basically where everyone votes, but this term is not really used in the contexts we are talking about anymore and is restricted to small groups. We now usually understand democracy as either the sort of chauvinist version westerners use (where being a republic with votes where American observers are allowed is really the only criteria) or just a system which is able to take input from its people and perform in a way which the people approve. Whether this is direct voting, voting for a representative, or public caucuses and discussions is less material than the fact that the information is utilized and the outcomes desired are reached.
On these standards, both the USSR and China (as well as most other major socialist countries commonly called undemocratic) are much more democratic than the US or any western state. The approval ratings (even by western polls within these nations) are much higher than western nations. This is because both the authority and democracy is oriented towards workers as opposed to the owners (meaning that private property and owners/management profits is not prioritized over the workers/people who work for wages).
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
Like this one maybe: hexbear.net/comment/3738759
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
I think you should likely expand more on this. Your replies are kinda low effort dunks, and we should be clearer about the why’s in such a thread where we are defending ourselves.
Don’t just describe a contradiction but how the world can be understood through that contradiction and its various aspects. Linking on authority is, of course, always relevant to these claims, but try just a bit harder or don’t post onto such a thread, imo. Or just link to another comrade talking about the exact thing, because I’ve read like 50 better explanations/replies in the past week from hexbear comrades.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
You brought up the military and it’s emblematic of how you misunderstand the way exploitation and expropriation work by individualizing everything and lacking knowledge about the concepts of rent-seeking and exploitation generally. That’s why it was quoted.
I agree it’s a tangent at this point and that’s why I would like to stop discussing it here, but I think it’d be fruitful to understand how these concepts are related in a thread dedicated to such. It wasn’t a tangent when you used it as an example for “getting ahead” because it’s genuinely how you understand people could get ahead or avoid pitfalls of poverty. That’s why you used it.
It is a genuine way to avoid poverty for some (for others they end up homeless anyways because war is traumatic, even for the oppressors), but this getting ahead (usually by having some capital built up to let your “money work for you”) is always done by profiting off of others through rent-seeking, exploitation (paying less than the value produced), or expropriation (plain theft or contribution to global theft from imperialism). Working hard is something we love and encourage people to do to help their countries and themselves as much as they want or can, but that’s not what you’re really describing here, or you’re discounting the labor which is terrible and hard which doesn’t get the priveleges we got (think of any country in the Global South where miners work at least 10 times as hard as us and get almost nothing for it, or even the cleaners who are almost always POC in America who get underpaid under the table but work harder than us).
I assume much of this rubs you the wrong way because these seem unrelated and terrible mischaracterizations. to you. But I assure you, these ideas are founded in hundreds of years of theories, data, and experiences which we’ve read about to conclude this. Maybe you disagree even after understanding it completely, fine, but it’s fairly obvious to those of us who’ve read both liberal philosophers and economists and Marxists that you don’t understand what us leftists are saying.
Now I’ll leave the discussion and disengage because you don’t want me here. You can reply if you want and I’ll stay quiet or start a thread where I’ll contribute.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
“without any actual research into the topic” I’d give some recommendations for some heavy or light reading which I’ve done to come to this conclusion, but with this part of your comment, I don’t think it matters to you at all and isn’t worth me collecting links for.
Instead, and in order to maintain a bit of order in this thread not intended for such long tangents, I suggest we do this: would you like to explain to me how you see being a soldier of the US or European armies functioning in local and global socio-economic processes? Let’s start a thread wherever you would prefer to have a good discussion on this. I can’t do anything but throw a bunch of sources at you without better understanding what you think yourself. If you can start this thread, I’ll take you seriously and collect the sources to help you understand this conclusion, and hopefully some comrades with a bit more knowledge than I have will also come and match your level of respect that you project there.
- Comment on Hexbear federation megathread 1 year ago:
It’s not tangential, it’s the primary function of the military of the US at this point. Kill at the periphery in order to expand the markets to cheap labour once that war is over and project the threat of violence everywhere else to maintain that position (like coast guard and military in allied countries). The free education is, once again, because the war profits are much higher than even the exploited soldiers produce for the empire. That doesn’t make it ok, but it’s good to clearly understand that the soldiers are exploited for the “value” captured from wars through the expropriation of the lands at war (look at theft of oil in Syria and Iraq for the easiest examples). Soldiers could, theoretically, be paid much more if capitalists didn’t primarily take the value taken. The whole process is horrific and everyone involved guilty for the horrors. That’s how soldiers get free education, though, by being exploited for their “work” of theft through expropriation
