Why is Marxism so Attractive?

[Baruch]

Have you not YET figured out that the parties switched sides in the 1960s?  Yeah, party=partisan, duh.  I dislike both parties and most of the minor ones.  I am not entirely on any party's side because none is entirely on MY side.

Unless you work directly for the DNC or RNC, neither party works for you.  You haven't yet figured that out.  And no, I don't care which form of Hell is more flavorful this week.  Partisanship is part of the problem.

[Cavebear]

Unless you work directly for the DNC or RNC, neither party works for you.  You haven't yet figured that out.  And no, I don't care which form of Hell is more flavorful this week.  Partisanship is part of the problem.

As I said (elsewhere?) I know neither party is entirely on my side.  Which is why I liked the 60s when there were candidates on all sides to choose among.  Sadly, no longer.

[Baruch]

For all you closet Marxists out there ... here is the real thing on a recent topic ...

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/jordan-peterson-enlightenment-nietzsche-alt-right

Reading this takes a lot less time than reading his books or listening to his meandering video lectures.

[Sal1981]

For all you closet Marxists out there ... here is the real thing on a recent topic ...

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/jordan-peterson-enlightenment-nietzsche-alt-right

Reading this takes a lot less time than reading his books or listening to his meandering video lectures.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

Fluss only alludes to Peterson being a post-modernist, but completly fails to demonstrate that.

Only thing I could draw from that article was that the author has reactionary response to Peterson's critic of the status quo of PC culture and post-modernism.

Sendt fra min SM-G920F med Tapatalk

[trdsf]

As I said (elsewhere?) I know neither party is entirely on my side.  Which is why I liked the 60s when there were candidates on all sides to choose among.  Sadly, no longer.

Also, it's pretty clear which of the two main parties is not just less on my side but is actively hostile to me.  Any place that exists within the current GOP for a gay atheist is small enough to fall victim to quantum mechanical effects.

[Cavebear]

For all you closet Marxists out there ... here is the real thing on a recent topic ...

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/jordan-peterson-enlightenment-nietzsche-alt-right

Reading this takes a lot less time than reading his books or listening to his meandering video lectures.

And, not being a closet or admitted Marxist, I don't care.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So, why is Marxism so attractive?  Because many people want a shortcut.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Marxism is humanity's tendency to form groups and work in and as a group taken to its absurd extreme. The force multiplier of combined effort is not to be underestimated. Two million people operating completely on their own can manage a bunch of straw huts and subsistence farming. Operating together, they become an empire capable of building pyramids.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Two million people interacting independently is far more powerful than two million people under one central control.

Central control gives you pyramids.  Independent interaction gives you computers.

[Shiranu]

Two million people operating completely on their own can manage a bunch of straw huts and subsistence farming. Operating together, they become an empire capable of building pyramids.

I'm actually going to have to disagree with you there, though not as heavily as I am going to have to disagree with Jason.

Two million people operating completely on their own won't even get you huts and subsistence farming. Two million people operating completely on their own will get you dead. There is a reason that even the earliest of human beings lived in groups of 5-10, and before them all our pre-humanoid ancestors lived in bands as well; we are not evolved to be individually self sufficient... we are infact the exact opposite, we are evolved to be extremely well suited for cooperation and group team work.

We are not exceptional hunters. We are not exceptional physical specimens. After working as a group, we can have the base resources required to live as purely individual creatures, but even then it is an extreme struggle. It's just not how we physically or mentally evolved. Without groups, we never would have had the time and organization to discover farming in the first place... and we would not be able to gather the resources to farm, hunt, and build houses. Farming is extremely hard work, harder than hunting (hence the reason farming only really develops in regions were hunting wasn't bountiful) and hunting takes up too much of your time to spend innovating housing and making anything other than the most basic of shelter.

But 90%, your point was bang on. Now to Jason's rebuttal...

Two million people interacting independently is far more powerful than two million people under one central control.

Evidence please, because the entirety of human (and pre-human) history directly contradicts that.

Central control gives you pyramids.  Independent interaction gives you computers.

"Independent interaction gives you computers."

Right. Take a second and think about that comment. No, please, go ahead.

Independent interaction, since about 8,000 BC and really well before then, has been borderline impossible. But lets just stick to the age of computers...

Did the people who invented computers live in houses? They are part of a interactive, organized community. Did they live in a city? That is a interactive, organized community. Did they have running water? Interactive, organized community. Electricity? Interactive, organized community. Where did they acquire the parts to build the computer? An interactive, organized community. What gave them the funding to spend time building a computer? An interactive, organized community. Did they go to school to have even the most basic of knowledge that allowed them to even formulate the idea of a computer? Product of an interactive, organized community.

I could literally go on for hours about how many factors required a centrally organized community for a computer to exist, but the point should be clear. You are just simply wrong from every facet of a factual standpoint; neither historically nor philosophically is the part stronger than the whole, or the disorganized stronger than the organized.

[Baruch]

Early man wasn't communist or democratic.  Marx is obsolete anthropology.  Early man was family/clan/tribe based.  And engaged in inter-clan rivalry and inter-tribe warfare.  There wasn't an early commissar for basket weaving or hut building.  Trying to do things bureaucratically would have gotten you clubbed (they had no writing to make a bureaucracy at first).  For early man, think Vikings, Mongols etc.

The advanced early civilizations were formed in semidry areas that required organized irrigation projects to function.  Weather, fertility, agricultural means ... made necessity the mother of invention.  And that produced theocracy and monarchy.  Again ... not republics, democracies or communes.  They had communes in modern Israel, kibbutzim, and they failed.  Everyone was paid the same, but not everyone worked as hard.  The Pharaoh knew how to put a stop to that.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Alright. Yes, two million people living completely on their own would be dead. I was being generous.

We banded into tribes precisely because we are social creatures and we depend on each other for protection and aid each other. We have never, at any time in our history, lived and done things alone. Not even our greatest inventions are the product of any one person. Take those computers, for example. To just discover the principles that makes the computer work took at least thirty people, to say nothing of the underpinnings that enabled them to discover those principles.

James Watt didn't invent the steam engine. He only invented a small, vital bit of it that turned the primitive steam pumps at the time into more-or-less efficient engines. Take any invention and trace the intellectual provenance of all its components, and you will never find a singular person. The process of science itself depends on a community to check your work; those who don't let others check their work are called "cranks."

[Hakurei Reimu]

Everyone was paid the same, but not everyone worked as hard.  The Pharaoh knew how to put a stop to that.

Enforcement is vital to every society, because cheaters always exist in every population.

[Baruch]

Enforcement is vital to every society, because cheaters always exist in every population.

Which is why the plantation model, disguised many times, is the only available model.

[Cavebear]

Which is why the plantation model, disguised many times, is the only available model.

You are suggesting, I think, that "the plantation model" is about corporations and workers today.  Is that correct?