/lit/ - Literature

>>16744360
Thomas Sowell man among my mentor

>>16744360
Thoms Sowell
My Tor

>>16744360
Thomas Sowell was a NIGGER!

Because what we have going now has failed every single day.
Do a little research on the topic before posting.
Here. Basic history to start you off

>still shilling this c00n's books
/pol/acks, everyone

>>16744360
Read wittgenstein and then realize that the words you use don't think what you think they mean. Have an existential crisis then depersonalize.

>>16744393
BOOBA

>>16744360
Refuted by Vaush

>>16744393
The French Revolution was a mistake.

>>16744415
ok chud

>>16744360
ooooh, poor little chuddy is mad.
are you sad that your daddy orange cheeto hitler lost?
leftism is winning. we won in ww2 when we defeated you nazis and we will win again every time.

>>16744491
people who won the WW2 for you were racists and defenders of patriarchy themselves, look up who participated in the anti-Civil Rights protests in the 50s and 60s. WW2 was a war between two different kinds of fascism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjbsD-TYi3s&ab_channel=MurderCapital

Not going to create a new thread, I just want to ask. When did the notion that there is no incentive in communism originate? I hear it all the time in modern centrist critiques but was that critique always there, or is a relatively modern argument? I ask because I don’t know much, but I would assume that it’s a somewhat recent thing that arose with the welfare state.

>>16744360
A
MAN
AMONG
MEN

>>16744491
>>16744509
Both your posts are giving me a headache. Stop being so dumb

>>16744509
They were the leftists of their time. If they were born today, they would support BLM, Biden, and ANTIFA. In fact, they were ANTIFA because they were fighting fascist scum.

>>16744491
WW2 was won by white supremacists who used Hitler's defeat as an excuse to destroy his nonwhite allies in the Middle East and to colonize the Levant, as well as crippling the Japanese to gain total control of the Pacific. It also resulted in Joseph Stalin personally owning five different countries like some kind of Babylonian king.

The Right always wins, because the Right's definition of "winning" is "bad ideas fail." Every time a bad idea fails, the Right wins. There is no final win-condition, because to the Right, there is no final victory, just an ongoing cascade of Leftists having bad ideas and those bad ideas then failing, occasionally broken up by periods of historic stasis.

You can bring up the French Revolution as the ur-example.

>Haha we're throwing off the shackles of the bourgoisie! Viva revolucion!
>W-wait we have an Emperor now?
>W-wait my five sons froze to death in Russia?
>W-wait we got BTFO and now we're Britain and Germany's bitch forever?

>>16744551
Everybody is actually a fascist, they just don't know that they are.

>>16744541
I'm not a communist but it probably derives from some warped notion of communism which equates it with perfect equality. Most Westerners are uneducated plebs so when they hear communism they think of "a system of wage labour but everyone earns the same amount of money". I guess that this argument is intended against this strawman "communism".

>>16744554
[X] to Doubt

>>16744562
this is true but it's not "right" vs "left"
It's just dialetics

>>16744551
No argument as expected.
>>16744554
I'm not an American and even if I were one I wouldn't vote for Trump.

>>16744541
Actual communism’s social motivator would be simple survival and friendly altruistic sorts of ways.
Clearly not talking about the Soviet Union here, but budgies still think they were communists.

Current capitalist motives are greed and survival, which results in only the nastiest of people ruling the world

>>16744541
It's always been a critique, it wasn't really formalized as such until the Goldwater Conservatives came around, because by that time they had pretty stark evidence to point to in the form of the Ukranian famines and China's cataclysmic fuckup of farm collectivization.

>>16744585
>Current capitalist motives are greed and survival, which results in high effort high quality products

FTFY

>>16744583
It would take a really long post try and set you two straight, and you’ll likely come up with some lame ass excuses and ignore your better. It’s true though. Those posts are pretty dumb.
So fuck you, I guess

>>16744602
>high quality products
For the highest bidder, which is a small pool. And tons of low quality cheap shit for the rest, which is a very large pool.
And speaking of pools the ocean is highly polluted because of all this ”high effort”

>>16744603
>I know you two are wrong but I don't have the time to share my encyclopedic knowledge with you so please just accept that you're inferior
every damn time

>>16744360
Bad kitty.

>>16744620
The average person in a communist country has/had much lower quality shit and general quality of life than the poor person in a capitalist country.

>>16744566
Everyone's a communist, they just don't have class consciousness yet

>>16744360
abolishing private property and production for exchange are necessary for the continued existence of life on this planet

so even if we buy this brainlet premise of "leftism" failing every time it has been tried the onus is still on us to try, and try, until it fucking works

>>16744554

I'm a lot more inclined to believe that the people who subscribe to the societal morality of today would have been vehement Nazi supporters if they had been born in Germany in the 20s
People who blindly support BLM, Biden, Antifa because its the 'right thing to do' dont do it because they've come to the conclusion that its right, they do it because they've been pressured into it and brainwahsed

>>16744654
My parents had a superior education to mine and they were of a minority ethnic group of a soviet satellite state.
>>16744660
Yet communists are the ones who end up killing eachother while the fascists do not. Perhaps we are more effective communicators.

>>16744695
>My parents had a superior education to mine and they were of a minority ethnic group of a soviet satellite state.
Cool story. Why did they emigrate, though?

>>16744602
both these things are true. market economies under capitalism work. they're extremely effective at doing the things they're supposed to do, and also extremely effective at doing things they're not supposed to do.

democratize the workplace, abolish growth fetishism, eliminate rent-seeking entirely, and you may have a working model for society.

>>16744654
>>16744695
Also, their quality of life was much higher. They had people, fun people, nice people. While I do not know the faces of my neighbors.
>>16744715
Because the soviet union disbandoned and they were fools who brought into the idea of "freedom" and "happiness"
Don't worry, I'm leaving.

>>16744743
>While I do not know the faces of my neighbors

Do you talk to them?

>>16744743
>They had people, fun people, nice people. While I do not know the faces of my neighbors.
This has little to do with communism, though, it's a more general trend. Americans in the 60s were much more sociable than now. Read pic related.

>Don't worry, I'm leaving.
Well, you'll be an exception then. Most have stayed for good and never looked back. They obviously prefer the evil greedy capitalist societies.

>>16744636
Never engage with tranny tripfags.

>>16744758
I don't see them. It's an apartment block. They're strangers and the tenants have changed many times over.
Yeah apartments aren't "capitalism" but they are a solution to a particular problem. The capitalist would want for you to live in an apartment while him in a house, preferably with low taxes.
"Communist" countries weren't really communist either, at their highest they were barely socialist.

>>16744808
>while him in a house, preferably with low taxes.

How terrible.

>>16744808

idk man I lived in a highrise in downtown Toronto and I knew almost everyone on my floor and then some.
Sounds like you're blaming capitalism for your poor social skills

>>16744782
>This has little to do with communism
I know.
>Americans in the 60s were much more sociable than now. Read pic related.
It's related to technology and the destruction of communties yes.
Thank you for the book recommendation.

>They obviously prefer the evil greedy capitalist societies.
They are just confused people that don't understand the system. If they did then they will go back home to their families and do something creative.

>>16744360
states do not "fail", typically. they are out-competed. the modalities of this competition are in perpetual evolution and have very little overlap with morality. 20th century communism could not compete with liberal democracy, and liberal democracy failed to compete with feudalism many, many times before it took over the world. the reasons are similar; belligerent neighbors ready to pounce on you at the faintest sign of weakness. the aggression nowadays is far more commercial in nature.

to answer your question directly, what keeps "leftism" alive today is a collection of moral principles, and the incompatibility of liberal democracy (colloquially known as "capitalism") with these principles. the intellectual traditions of communism and anarchism (often bundled together as the "far left") are the most developed alternatives we have conceived of so far.

>>16744808
>The capitalist would want for you to live in an apartment while him in a house

What's with people always thinking that of a capitalist as a caricature and not some small business owner who doesn't give a fuck where you live

>>16744881
because the "small business owners" are insignificant

>>16744654
That was a state centralized “socialist” [mixed economy] NOT communism.

>>16744890

The vast majority of capitalists are everyday people who prefer free trade and exchange to an alternative system
Also billionaires dont give a fuck where you live either

>>16744360

because "leftism" has always been a reaction to the oppression of the "right."

If everyone wouldn't tell others what to do we wouldn't be having this conversation.

>>16744793
We don’t seem to have any, chief.
They’re just in your head it seems.

Well admittedly capitalism is a terrible system, I've read Marx's critiques of it and they are good non-moral criticisms, however they come from the perspective that "historical progress" is a good thing, he was against capitalism but still sees it as a "progressive" force, building the necessary factories, boats and railroads for socialist revolution. Marxists see "progress" as exploiting the resources of the planet for human need more, after all one of their most popular jokes is "Automated luxury communism" which is in my view just as much of a dystopia as progressing Burgerpunk. Marx (perhaps only earlier on, he may have changed his view, I know he supported Ireland, India and Poland for independence) even saw colonialism as progressive and necessary, which speaks for itself.
Industrial socialism isn't the answer. Industrial society is the problem and has a limited lifespan, even socialism won't be able to escape resource shortages and climate change.
Then of course you have modern Marxists, more concerned with gay rights and arguing with right wingers on Twitter than actually fighting with their fellow(implying half of them are even employed) workers. It, just like anarchism, is seen as a counter-culture by most people, just "eat the rich", and not the critique of society Marx wrote about. Marxism is a dead movement that has been consumed by capital, though I suppose it may still be alive in the "Third world" where factory conditions are just as bad as they were when Marx was writing in Victorian England.

>>16744881
I'm not the communist but the typical Marxist response to this is that you need not bother with small business owners (petite bourgeoisie) because the progress of capitalism ensures centralization of means of production which eliminates the petite bourgeois from the market. In other wors capitalism itself makes this argument less and less valid (although it might've been valid in the 19th century). Most newly established companies in America fail and go bankrupt within 2 years from their establishment so I guess there is an element of truth to it.

>>16744360

Because the wretched stew of naive idealism regarding human nature (Well-intentioned or not), desire for total liberation from 'arbitrary' constraint, and resentment will always find someone to consume it.

There is always some kind of 'progress' to be made, 'oppression' to be resisted, and 'equality' to be sought. And in spite of the fact that the pursuit of such things lead more often than not to destruction and disappointment, they just can't help themselves.

>>16744393

There's more to history than the meandering of Marxoids on the nuances of class.

>>16744660

Class Consciousness is a meme.

>>16744743

The Soviet Union died for a reason. It was a polluted, decayed mockery of its ideals, unable to give its populace much more than a subpar imitation of capitalist living standards.

The glasses looked back upon are rose-tinted mainly because of the bungled transition out of communism and the admittedly terrible conditions after in the former Soviet Empire. But such conditions were rooted ultimately in the decaying Soviet system than the transition out of it.

>>16744782

There is some difference. The USA's decay is due more to ill-considered cultural changes more than anything else...

here's your (you)

>>16744928
>Marxoids
Child, please. This goes deeper than that one economist

>>16744928
Please stop the Reddit spacing.

>>16744845
I am not actually blaming capitalism for this, it's more of an indirect cause. Capitalism in spirit, which indefinitely leads to plutocracy.
>>16744881
Practicing free enterprise is not the same as capitalism.
>>16744897
Kek, imagine being spooked by conservative propaganda. Education was just fine in soviet and former republics. They just needed to give instruction to even more people.

>>16744897
>muh not real communism
You could say the West isn't real capitalism either.

But it doesn't really matter. When we're talking about economic incentives they're decent examples.
Not being allowed to own a private enterprise and to accumulate wealth makes people less likely to produce good stuff, to innovate and so on.

>>16744897
>>16744944
Marxists fighting over whether the society that collapsed from the top down due to the bureaucracy it created was "real socialism" as usual jfl.

>>16744956
success has many fathers, failure has none

>>16744897
"socialism" and "mixed economy" are not compatible terms. there is no private sector in a socialist state.

>>16744902
to leftists, a "capitalist" is someone who owns capital. they tend to mock proles who identify as such despite collecting salaries as their sole source of revenue and at the very best owning their houses. with that said, they don't need to practice communism to call themselves "communists", so it's pretty hypocritical.

in any case, if you don't own capital, it matters very little what you believe. you're a prole and you are subject to the will of the rich and the powerful.

>>16744928
>The Soviet Union died for a reason. It was a polluted, decayed mockery of its ideals, unable to give its populace much more than a subpar imitation of capitalist living standards.
the soviet union died because some people thought it doesn't exist anymore.
>But such conditions were rooted ultimately in the decaying Soviet system than the transition out of it.
Maybe, I'm not familiar with soviet economics. Or Whether the soviets used monopoly money or not, they probably did.

>>16744956
i am not a Marxist I am just like looking at things honestly.

>>16744973
>the soviet union died because some people thought it doesn't exist anymore.
I see you guys blame the fall of the Soviet Union on the bureaucrats like Khrushchev and Gorbachev but maybe if your system inevitably creates separate social strata that has the power to destroy the whole country as we've seen in every single fucking Marxist country, it's shit.

>>16744881
the small business owners don't get bailouts when the economy goes to shit (once every 10 years)
they just go out of business and become workers again

>>16744956
Marxists who actually believe in the 'stateless, classless' society are nothing but religious zealots. They can't even describe how this society will function, and when they try it is laughably easy to point out the elements that clearly imply a state and classes. Completely deluded fucking retards

>>16744987
>you guys
I'm not a marxist
>but maybe if your system inevitably creates separate social strata that has the power to destroy the whole country as we've seen in every single fucking Marxist country, it's shit.
All states are ideas. If the idea of the state stops existing then that is when the state is dead.

>>16744964

That was beautifully put

>>16744987
"Marxism" is not a system

>>16745022
Marxism-Leninism is what I mean.

>>16744948
State-capitalism does indeed *change* over a period of time. Which is why you can’t get back to this dream of. “Free market” and you now live with “late capitalism”
>Not being allowed to hurt your neighbors will mean we will just sit on our asses and die

>>16744956
>Marxists
Don’t change the subject

>>16744964
>there is no private sector in a socialist state.
Oh, try to tell them that. They still think socialism is when the government does stuff

>>16744897

The Soviet style of communism was socialist. The organs of the party representing 'democratically' the people organizing and owning the means of production through their bureaucratic administration. To the ultimate goal of 'true communism'.

Just because it was bigger bureaus doing the planning and coordination instead of communes or kibbutz-like organs does not render it 'false' socialism/communism.

It was not a mixed economy because it didn't really have any capitalistic elements to it for the majority of its existence. It was planned in accordance to the social needs of the USSR, not market forces or pressures.

>>16744973

It died because the dream didn't pan out. Brotherhood was a joke in a Russian-dominated slavic government (There was degrees of advancement in that respect, but minorities will still subjects...). Because the economy did not provide the common man much more than a crude minimum. Because it couldn't inspire much of the population to do much more than drink themselves to death, pump out a kid, and clock into a make-work job.

>>16744942

He is the tree from which things branch out of.

>>16744943

No.

>>16745022
it's a system of thought that implies certain political actions you scarequoting faggot

>>16745045
Butterfly piss off and maybe try reading authors outside the leftist echochamber you've created for yourself. Every book I see you recommend is leftist.

>>16745049
yes and "outlawing homosexuality" or "invading Finland" are not among them. the conflation of soviet communism and Marxism is reactionary nonsense.

>>16744943
>>16745046

Spacing after quoting is objectively better

>>16745077

> the conflation of soviet communism and Marxism is reactionary nonsense

So is the conflation between corporatism and capitalism but I think we understand how the connections work

i thought butterflies were attracted to flowers not sowell threads

>>16745079
It takes up unnecessary space and offers no visual benefit, it actually is worse since it introduces a pause between then quoted post and the reply which separates them

>>16745056
To become as ill informed as you? No. Having read these things I’d come back and say the same things as I’ve said above.
Now it’s your turn to piss off

>>16744360
People use this argument without considering how deeply flawed our current system of hypercapitalism is. People are starving on the streets, most of the wealth in this country is owned by 1%, people are working for wages that turn them into slaves, and yet you defend this god awful system as if it has merit attached to it. You say "failed every time" but what is you measure of success exactly?? Has it occurred to you that many of these leftists experiments failed because at their most nascent westernism interfered? I'm not saying this is always the case, as is true of the soviet union in which countless atrocities occurred by their own hand, but doesn't the number of those places we interfered with you startle you?

>>16745100
Lmao I've read plenty of Anarchist and Marxist writers. I guess everyone who disagrees with your utopian vision is "ill informed".

>>16745046
>It died because the dream didn't pan out.
Yes exactly. All states are dreams, ideas.
As for the particularies of living experience, that is all person to person, year to year, different and subjective.
Who are we comparing? The average who? When?
I would say the spiritual condition of the people under the USSR were far beyond than that of a zoomer growing up in USA today can dream of, especially with regards to the bastardization of culture.

>>16744909

Yet to be replied to.

>>16745090
the point is that it's not useful without proper analysis. the fact that other leftists only parrot slogans and other superficialities does not own me in the slightest.

>>16745095

Space isn't finite on these boards, and it offers a pleasant look when the quoted post has space between the information at the top of the post and the content below it

>>16744360
Oh, look it's just another /pol/thread on migration through 4chan
Good luck, /pol/thread

>>16745118
Ted Kaczynski nerds can fuck right off

>>16745109
We were talking about the USSR not being communist

>>16745125
It is a shit look, it is a random disruption between what you're addressing and what you're saying, that makes your brain think for a second that the two aren't related. And when you make a long faggoty post replying to four different people with your stupid spacing it takes up half the screen

>>16745130
Nice response. And I'm not even basing most of my critique on his, I'm basing it off the very real fact that industrial society is unsustainable.

>>16745105
>People are starving on the streets
In the West? Very few, if any at all. And much fewer than those starving under communism.
>most of the wealth in this country is owned by 1%
Not a real problem as long as most people are okay.
>people are working for wages that turn them into slaves
Same as in communism.
>what is you measure of success exactly
Here's one: people overwhelmingly prefer to live in capitalist societies over communist ones.

>>16745148
the problem isn't industry. science can only make our usage of resources more efficacious. the problem is growth as the chief indicator of success, and our total inability to put any sort of limit on it.

>>16745105
People use this argument without considering that life is hard, poverty is the natural state of man, and things have overall never been better in all of human history. That the current system is worse than the Marxists' imagined classless utopia is not a realistic criticism of it.

>>16745148
It's a good post, but what is the solution to industrial society?

>>16745148
i was an anti-tech fag like you anon, still kinda am
but let's be honest what are the possibilities that we'll ever bomb the central electrical grid and live a normal simple life? pretty unlikely
capitalism inherently needs unchecked technological "growth", modern marxists' obsession with technology is just a passing fad, it's not inherent to the system they advocate for

>>16745146

Gotta disagree my man, I think it looks a lot cleaner. Keeps thing spacious and less cluttered.

Also
>half the screen

>>16745170
growth means power, powerful states will destroy less powerful ones, those that grow more will always win

>>16744393
Surprised you didn’t immediately call Sowell a nigger as you are wont to do whenever he is posted

>>16745115

I'd agree to some manner on the last part. But only because the effects of decay are hitting us as hard if not harder because our fall is perhaps slightly more shocking.

The USSR's decline was somewhat slower, like a slowly spreading cancer.

We in the Western, Capitalist world had the world in our fingers after the fall of the USSR. Most people can remember a triumphal, end-of-history kind of world. Zoomers can still taste, if not know what was. The fact that so much of it is preserved to tease us worsens it.

In spite of the flaws of the period, we know there was something better. That it is now gone forever. I think a better comparison would be Britain and France after their fall from Empire, but worse psychologically.

And all of it is sliding away as I type. Or has slid away. People feel cheated. Rightly. And know that it will only get worse.

>>16745170
>the problem isn't industry.
Yes it is.
>science can only make our usage of resources more efficacious.
Yes, it can, that doesn't mean resource shortages will stop, only that it will take longer to run out. Oil is needed, oil is limited. Coal is needed, coal is limited and even a worse polluter than oil, etc.
>the problem is growth as the chief indicator of success, and our total inability to put any sort of limit on it.
Implying growth will stop in a socialist society?

>>16744585
Current capitalist motives are actually REAL. The incentivizing factor of human kindness flies directly in the face of the hierarchy of needs that is hardwired into human behavioral psychology. People commit themselves to philanthropy only once all of their own needs are met, but Communists would have us believe that through phianthropic will, people will meet all of their and everyone else's needs.

It is quite literally putting cart before horse. Human beings evolved as creatures who innately fear starvation, lack of shelter, etc. When you remove these threats they begin turning to more complex forms of satisfaction--but it has been illustrated time and time again that when survival is an issue, people don't get around a campfire and sing kumbayah, they work for their own interests often and indeed most of the time at other peoples' expense.

This is why the concept of the multicultural pluralistic egalitarian society that Communists espouse is such a bad idea that it was written about in the fucking bible. Old testament. 4000 year old mud people on the dunes of Egypt had a more coherent understanding of human group behavior than any communist alive or dead, it was conveyed in the story of the Tower of Babel. Even the concept of class consciousness is so patently absurd that you can disprove it by looking out the window.

At yet there are STILL people who subscribe to this ideological trainwreck of a philosophy and claim it to be scientific.

>>16745197
you might think it looks better but it is objectively a worse way to post, paragraph breaks imply a semantic rupture, so you are disconnecting what you're saying from its recipient

>>16745167
people overwhelmingly prefer to live in socdem societies over liberal ones, and that is mostly due to their ability to put socialist principles into practice

>>16745171
throughout most of human history, things had "overall" never been better

>>16745198
and because that's not conducive to the improvement of the human condition, there's a pressing need to abolish it

the adoption of shared values is the reason why we as a species managed to progress beyond the "warring tribes" stage and we can do it again

>>16745188
>modern marxists' obsession with technology is just a passing fad, it's not inherent to the system they advocate for
Is it? Every one I talk to online is insane about Cockshott, who wants "cybernetic socialism". I've talked to ones in real life and they equally think computers will save socialist society and that we need science to save the world. Even the old Marxists were insane about technology, "Communism is Soviet Power + Electrification of the Whole Country"

>>16745229
>, there's a pressing need to abolish it
doesnt matter, the ones that choose power will win
>the adoption of shared values is the reason why we as a species managed to progress beyond the "warring tribes" stage
lmao no. It was power, the powerful tribes conquered the less powerful, values are enforced by those in power, you will believe anything your superiors tell you to.

>>16745183
Like I said it's unsustainable. Once we hit peak oil, industrialism will crumble more year by year. Although I'd obviously not want to get to that point. We need to show people how "Green new deal" type stuff is delaying the inevitable.

>>16744360
Uh yes the failed state of China which is currently run by the Communist Party of China.

>>16745231
The Soviets actually did get pretty close to a working model of a fully digitized planned economy. It probably wouldn't have worked in practice but they were definitely to the point of admitting that communism could not be administered by humans and had to be somehow impartially run by machines.