/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16220567]

What books explore the phenomenon of alienation under capitalism?

[Anonymous No.16220581]

>>16220567
>Reddit screenshot
Quite possibly worse than a Twitter screenshot, desu. Why are you browsing Reddit?

[Anonymous No.16220595]

>>16220567
Go back and take your tranny friends with you

[Anonymous No.16220619]

>>16220567
>implying alienation/atomization is caused by capitalism rather than technological progress
read Kaczynski dumbfuck

[Anonymous No.16220627]

>>16220567
Culture of Narcissism by Lasch
The Fall of Public Man by Sennett

[Anonymous No.16220630]

>>16220567
Faggot reddit pic, but that was the whole shingle of the "Angry Young Men" crowd. Even if much of that self-pitying was more an enjoyable experience than correct philosophical idea, as when most of them became extraordinarily right wing as they grew older.

[Anonymous No.16220646]

>>16220567
>implying alienation/atomization is caused by technological progress rather than death anxiety
Read The Denial of Death dumbfuck

[Anonymous No.16220650]

>>16220619
idiot

[Anonymous No.16220651]

>>16220619
>Ignore mountains of scholarship that developed over 200 years and read my cult leader

[Anonymous No.16220656]

Harassment Architecture

>"All this "honest work" kills beauty in man too. It forces men into poor diet, poor choices, poor paths outside the workplace. Everything in life for them, whether they chose so or not, must revolve around their "honest work". No time to research, pick, and cook a proper meal so I have chips and soda again. No time to work out, to worship the sun in peace, to study so I watch television and jerk off in-between beers again. No time to even so much as consider another way of life so I hammer nails into useless thing for useless people in useless place again. You are being scammed, robbed."

[Anonymous No.16220681]

>>16220619
They tend to just take all the dramatic changes caused by technology and attribute them to capitalism, because their definition of capitalism is in practice just 'society for the past few hundred years'.

[Anonymous No.16220685]

>I have no friends
>Capitalism caused this

[Anonymous No.16220687]

>>16220651
>scholarship

[Anonymous No.16220699]

>>16220567
Alienation from society isn't a new phenomenon
Every time you change your environment more away from a "natural" state (whatever this is), some people will distance and isolate themselves from society
This is no problem specific to capitalism but to change itself and we're experiences it increasingly often because the change is not linear but exponential. So the current point in history always feels as it would be the worst moment ever

I think Absurdism captures this feeling quite well and although "generic", Albert Camus got his Literature Nobel Price because he could write stories which encapsulate exactly this social alienation

Other Authors dealing with this issue are
Jean Paul Satre with La Nausee
Firedrich Hölderlin
Georg Hegel

And maybe the one who comes nearest to your original request is Marx. But he talks more on the issue of alienated work, and in a sense that the worker gets alienated from his produced goods and can never achieve self-fulfillment
And that this separation leads to a split from himself and other people

[Anonymous No.16220700]

>>16220567
>redditors crying over capitalism again
the only people who drone on and on about how unfair capitalism is are utter fucking losers. there are fucking twelve year old girls making bank doing makeup tutorials on youtube. imagine getting out competed by a literal fucking child then crying online about how unfair it is.

[Anonymous No.16220745]

>>16220567
Stupid, it's easy to make friends if you're not a self important asshole. It is the political prioritization of individual identity which alienates you from your friends. I say this as a lefty myself- most groups of lefties are inter competitive incest pits of mediocre physiques fucking each other as often as they fuck each other over. No place for a relationship in careerist nonsense, see the exile book review of the handmaid's tale for the best illustration of this psychological posture I've ever read.
It's easy to make friends. If you're a man, hit up some friendly acquaintances from work to go to the gym or go shooting with. Make stupid jokes and talk about local sports. Bam you've got friends. Get married for access to even more chill bros via husbands of your wife's married friends. Girls do the same shit but instead of the gym they go on runs and get dessert. Or go shopping I guess.
Anyway deleuze and guattari talk about this, Putnam wrote a book called "bowling alone" which is somewhat dry but will explain everything you would ever want to know about this. Christopher Lasch covers this in culture of narcissism. Didion writes about this in the white album and slouching towards Bethlehem. DFW talks about this. Pinecone talks about this.

[Anonymous No.16220913]

>>16220567
Considering you haven't reply to any of comments since you posted this an hour ago, I'll assume you are just baiting political discussion.

[Anonymous No.16220927]

>>16220619
Moron.

[Anonymous No.16220936]

>>16220700
Get back to work, prole.

[Anonymous No.16220937]

Just go live in a village/town in the countryside.

[Anonymous No.16220946]

>>16220651
Technology is capital numbnuts

Some britbong dug up some naughty kid rock and viola.

[Anonymous No.16220954]

>>16220927
>>16220651
>>16220650
This is the level of Marxist intellectualism
The lowest tier of ad hominems and arguementless appeals to unnamed authorities

[Anonymous No.16220956]

>>16220699
>Alienation from society isn't a new phenomenon
it actually is

[Anonymous No.16220960]

>>16220956
In what way?

[Anonymous No.16220963]

>>16220946
Technology is not capital, why do you guys say such retarded shit. They are different concepts.

[Anonymous No.16220968]

>>16220956
No, you just now get to experience what some Pharaoh thousands of years ago did.

[Anonymous No.16220972]

>>16220963
Presently they are tandem.
Https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocapitalism

[Anonymous No.16220980]

>>16220651
lmao you've likely never read any of that scholarship, if you did you'd know that no one gave a fuck about early Marxist concepts like alienation until after WW2

[Anonymous No.16220990]

>>16220972
What is your point that capitalism and technology are in a feedback loop? That doesn't make them the same thing.

[Anonymous No.16221127]

>>16220956
I meant not new on a timescale since human civilization began 12000 years ago
Aristotle is afaik the first person grasping the issue about social alienation and even the it was described in the context of fast fundamental social change
So we can safely assume this problem already existed before to the point where development of human societies began to accelerate which is circa 12000 years ago

And as I mentioned, it always feels worst in out current situation because we're exponentially making things worse, but which doesn't exclude that it already existed earlier

[Anonymous No.16221131]

>>16220567
In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1932), Karl Marx expressed the Entfremdung theory—of estrangement from the self. Philosophically, the theory of Entfremdung relies upon The Essence of Christianity (1841) by Ludwig Feuerbach which states that the idea of a supernatural god has alienated the natural characteristics of the human being. Moreover, Max Stirner extended Feuerbach's analysis in The Ego and its Own (1845) that even the idea of "humanity" is an alienating concept for individuals to intellectually consider in its full philosophic implication. Marx and Friedrich Engels responded to these philosophic propositions in The German Ideology (1845).

[Anonymous No.16221140]

Houellebecq

[Anonymous No.16221141]

>>16220990
It would be more accurate to say accumulated machinery is capital.

[Anonymous No.16221175]

>>16220567
>>16220651
>>16220927
>>16220936
>>16220946
>>16220956

[Anonymous No.16221326]

>>16221175
that picture gave me aids and severe brain damage all at once.

[Anonymous No.16221464]

>>16221326
t.

[Anonymous No.16221479]

Brave New World by Huxley and Atomised by Houellebecq are exactly what you are looking for

[Anonymous No.16221513]

>>16221175
>it's not the fact that you're poor that matters, it's that you don't get to set the standard for normalcy
I'll never understand how you can't see that you're being manipulated

[Anonymous No.16221521]

>>16221513
>it's fine that you get ethnically cleansed from your cities, the only problem is capitalism

[Anonymous No.16221558]

>>16220619
Aren’t Capitalism and Technological progress two sides of the same coin? They have a kind of symbiotic relationship. Modernism, endless lust for growth/progress etc

[Anonymous No.16221561]

>>16221521
oh, you're just a schizo

[Anonymous No.16221589]

>>16221561
Yeah I hallucinated Detroit and Baltimore

[Anonymous No.16221653]

>>16221558
Not really. Capitalism is first and foremost about making profits over valuing lives, so of course technology will often be used for more exploitation. In a hypothetical society which wasn't so obsessed with money and endless growth, technology could be used to help people and make their lives easier more often.

[Anonymous No.16221661]

>>16221653
>Capitalism is first and foremost about making profits over valuing lives,
how do you expect to be taken seriously

[Anonymous No.16221664]

>>16221589
You created Detroit and Baltimore?

[Anonymous No.16221665]

>>16221661
please, enlighten me as to how capitalism has a higher priority for people’s well-being than profits

[Anonymous No.16221670]

>>16221653
Read your Ellul.
Technique isn't merely the equipment- it's the social engineering which capitalism propagates.

[Anonymous No.16221704]

>>16221513
It's more that the standard of normalcy is hostile towards you.

[Anonymous No.16221721]

Does capitalism fall apart if you guarantee the basic rights of reproduction for all (housing, healthcare, food, a meaningful job)?

I don't think capitalism is all evil but letting it be the dominant way to manage society by letting market forces dictate the means to reproduction is pure evil and is responsible for pretty much all social ills that are currently being highlighted. At the same time I'd be interested in books that either agree or disagree with above.

[Anonymous No.16222154]

>>16221558
>Aren’t Capitalism and Technological progress two sides of the same coin?
No!
Capitalism is about the alienation of the worker from it's produced goods by separating capital and work
Technological Progress is about the alienation of humans from it's natural state by modifying our environment and society to a state our brains are not meant to comprehend

Capitalism can work without Technological Progress
Technological Progress can be achieved without Capitalism

The only thing those two have in common is their quest for progress
And on this, one could argue that it's in inherent human characteristic, maybe even a universal law of nature, to always seek progress and march forward

[Anonymous No.16222214]

>>16222154
>Fable of progress
Another self-serving lie for robo-capitalism

[Anonymous No.16222216]

>>16221653
>Capitalism is first and foremost about making profits over valuing lives
This is not an property belonging exclusively to capitalism
Capitalism only puts a number on a human live
Before Capitalism we just used our conscious to value a life
The only difference being in one we clearly see the value we assign, in the other we just have to guess. But those two values are most likely the same!

>so of course technology will often be used for more exploitation
Technology isn't used to "exploit" other humans, it is primarily a tool and when it wouldn't exist we would do it otherwise

>In a hypothetical society which wasn't so obsessed with money and endless growth,
Money and endless growth aren't the problem
We just incentivize the wrong actions, and this is independent from our current economic system. This is a sociological issue

>technology could be used to help people and make their lives easier more often.
it already is, you may not have noticed but you live like a 18th century aristocrat

[Anonymous No.16222224]

I get that technology is the problem here, but isnt the commercialization and commodification of information technology, like social media, online video games and ultimately the internet itself making the problem way worse than it would be in a marxist state?

[Anonymous No.16222249]

>>16222214
I never pledged for or against one of those two
Progress can exist on many different levels and isn't bound to Technology or any economic ideology

[Anonymous No.16222250]

>>16221721
>does a thing fall existing in a world where people are different fall apart if you act as if people aren't different?
Yes.

[Anonymous No.16222252]

>>16222224
The Internwt of things would make the central planning better allegedly

[Anonymous No.16222273]

Books about failures who worship an even bigger failure?

[Anonymous No.16222305]

>>16222224
Who said in a Marxist state those things wouldn't exist?
Commercialization just puts a price society is willing to pay on a product or service
In a Marxist State you still have to find out what to work on, what to develop and what service you offer. So instead on pricing it, you replace it with some kind of voting or whatever system but which lets you end up with the same problematic services

Technology isn't a Problem but the people making and using it. Nobody had a problem when the internet was used by Universities exchanging knowledge, why are some video games are considered worthy or art pieces and why does some social media actually helps people socialize?

Prevent Technological Progress or establish an alternative state that makes the same mistakes won't save anything, but understanding our brain and incentivizing the right things will

[I No.16222345]

>>16220567
alienate your anus, dig

[Anonymous No.16222349]

>>16221513
Hmmm perhaps its both

[Anonymous No.16222352]

>complaining about capitalism

Either the people have economic freedoms or they don't, what kind of moron wants the state/king controlling the economy?

[Anonymous No.16222360]

>>16222352
Bro haha the state will only control it for a limited time and then the state goes away for uhhhh reasons.

[Anonymous No.16222363]

>>16222352
How can it be free if it's controlled by a handful of megacorps?

[Anonymous No.16222519]

>>16222305
Are you honestly asking me why commercialized internet wouldnt exist in a marxist economy?

[Anonymous No.16222549]

>>16220567
>reddit
Also that post reads like it was written by a trancel
>>16220619
Capitalism and technological “progress” are the same

[Anonymous No.16222562]

Can I still consider myself a capitalist?

[Anonymous No.16222619]

>>16221513
You’ll feel alienated when the standards of normalcy are geared towards alienating you

[Anonymous No.16222635]

Mark Fisher is a good start (RIP). I suggest Capitalist Realism.

[Anonymous No.16222660]

>>16220619
Technological progress isn't inherently alienating. No I will not read your schizodaddy.

[Anonymous No.16222687]

>>16222352
>what kind of moron wants the state/king controlling the economy?
The kind who think that they'll be able to get free gender reassignment surgeries under communism.

[Anonymous No.16222688]

>>16222562
In that test you will get libertarian left even if you are genghis khan

[Anonymous No.16222711]

So under a non capitalist system I would have friends? Is that what OPs picture means? Because no one likes me now so I don't understand how a different economic or social system will result in people being nicer to me. Makes no sense at all.

[Anonymous No.16222716]

>>16222711
No

[Anonymous No.16222729]

>>16221665
When it comes to most products and services, people tend not to buy them if it kills them, so not killing people is considered good.
Under communism, killing people just means mouths you couldn't feed anyway, so who gives a shit.

[Anonymous No.16222739]

>>16222352
Only conmen like politicians or economists spout free market ideology while we just had a second round of huge government intervention in our lifetime. The best part is the more "free" the market is from regulation and the more people believe in it the more likely it'll need another round of aid. I hope it happens after Biden takes office so we can get a real dictator in office. Just shoot me

[Anonymous No.16222772]

>>16222660
>if the people producing my sissy hypno VR porn were in charge of the company that distributes it I would no longer feel alienated!

[Anonymous No.16223011]

>>16222688
Any recommendations for a better one?

[Anonymous No.16223013]

The ending of Faust part 2 and the chapters on Primitive Accumulation from Capital go nicely together.

People in this thread are do not understand what OP means by alienation. It is not simply alienation from others - it is quite possible to have good friendships and family life under capitalism. It is alienation from your social and natural environment as a whole. It simply is not possible to have as robust of a relationship to one's community and natural environment as a wagie or even bourgeois as a peasant, a lord, a member of a tribe, or essentially any other class in history besides a total slave. Compare how Plato and Aristotle write about political life to how we approach politics today, that will give you an idea of what is meant by alienation under capitalism.

[Anonymous No.16223101]

>>16223013
Or maybe marxist trannies feel alienated because they joined a suicide cult that considers not merely every other person, but literally everything around them to be "the enemy".

[Anonymous No.16223186]

>>16220651
>mountains of scholarship
>over 200 years
You mean a handful of people who have been severely criticized from all sides and are not remotely accepted as some kind of objective history or analytic process by literally anyone, the principal portion of which have been radicals in the last 60 years, and the assumption that it provides some kind of fundamental and superior critique relies firmly on just plain out ignoring the arguments and evidence of opposition.
Unsurprising that someone who probably believes history is an act of oppression doesn't actually know any history.

[Anonymous No.16223198]

>>16221513
What does being poor have to do with feeling alienated in society? I grew up poor and never felt like society was running away from me and becoming hostile towards me until a bunch of screeching, radical leftists assumed control of social media and made it a liberal platform that routinely practices intellectual exile against badwrongthink.

[Anonymous No.16223209]

>>16222772
lol

[Anonymous No.16223213]

>>16220567
my diary desu

[Anonymous No.16223230]

Alienation is just a flavor-of-the-month buzzword, like 'bad faith'.

[Anonymous No.16223232]

>>16220656
>you have no option but to become a thoughtless robot because i think so
>source: i really want to be right
If reification and projection became impossibilities for humans, do you think leftists would even have any arguments?

[Anonymous No.16223264]

>>16220567
Das Kapital. Mein Kampf probably

[Anonymous No.16223280]

>>16223232

Can you ever trust a leftoid to have a legitimate argument? I used to think Molyneux was a pseud who simply couldn't argue their points, but then I realized he was right -- they have none.

[Anonymous No.16223296]

>>16223280
Yes.

[Anonymous No.16223675]

>>16223198
^This exactly. Same story.

[Anonymous No.16223703]

>>16223013
Why couldn't you attribute that to multiculturalism or technology or any other bogeyman

[Anonymous No.16223705]

>>16223703
He's not a pseud

[Anonymous No.16223795]

>>16220972
The Great Firewall of China disagrees

[Anonymous No.16223808]

>>16221127
The entirety of human diaspora from the first monkey coming down from a tree is a story of societal alienation and splintering.
let's all go live innawoods.

[Anonymous No.16224031]

>>16221513
there's no talking sense to these people
it's useless
gays, blacks and Jews is why their life sucks
nothing more to it

[Anonymous No.16224429]

>>16220567
Marx. Particularly wage and length of working day in capital.

Oh you mean feeling bad not having the product of your labour stripped from you in order to subsist. HTFUC

[Anonymous No.16224444]

These people really don't understand the reality of their lives. My father grew up poor in a tiny village in Greece and dropped out of school at 13 to work in a shipyard, at 16 he came to the US. Now i'm here, an engineer at a fortune 500 company. It's absolutely mind boggling the generational jump in status that has occurred solely due to capitalism.

The only catch is not everyone has it in them. Some people just can't/don't want to compete, and unfortunately a capitalistic country like the US is not a good place for those people. We are like the top .5-1% of the entire planet.

Arguing that it's too hard to juggle making it and making friends in a place like that is akin to arguing that it's hard to get meat in a lion's den.If you want to live in chad town you have to learn to play by chad rules.

[Anonymous No.16224521]

1844 Manuscripts by Marx

[Anonymous No.16224523]

>>16220619
look at this nigga, have you even read ted? he's a anarchist leftist

[Anonymous No.16224529]

>>16220700
Read nigga, read. Personally, I'm actually pretty successful, I just realize Capitalism is a very flawed system and we have to do better.

[Anonymous No.16224540]

>>16224444
>My father grew up poor in a tiny village in Greece and dropped out of school at 13 to work in a shipyard, at 16 he came to the US. Now i'm here, an engineer at a fortune 500 company. It's absolutely mind boggling the generational jump in status that has occurred solely due to capitalism.
LMAO your dad got you to where you are today, 95% of the world cannot move to USA to start a new life

[Anonymous No.16224546]

>>16220567
Go back there newfag

[Anonymous No.16224575]

>>16221175
Uhh you realize all the shit being displayed just shows bourgeois decadence, right? You think they had fucking Drag Queens in the USSR?

[Anonymous No.16224633]

>>16224444
this. People are just no interested to compete a lot for fulfilling their hedonistic cravings.
People prefer to have pleasures free of charge, instead of competing for it through wageslaving.
This is why democracy is the best system: some drones can keep working hard and fulfill their spook of self made man, and the other (the majority) leech off of those deluded slaves.

[Anonymous No.16224643]

>>16224633
>and the other (the majority) leech off of those deluded slaves.
It's literally the opposite you fucking retard

[Anonymous No.16224662]

>>16220567
Better question: what books explore the phenomenon that life is pretty cool under capitalism?

[Anonymous No.16224663]

>>16224643
I like how you open wide your mouth when you react my quote, just like when you sucked my cock.

[Anonymous No.16224666]

>>16224662
They don't exist.

[Anonymous No.16224717]

>>16224540
My dad and his mother moved in with a distant relative who let them stay in her duplex in a shitty neighborhood. I grew up poor, we never had any wealth and my parents pissed away all the money they had. My brother is a lot more successful than me (finance chad) but my sister is borderline retarded so what's left of their money (condos worth ~125k at most each) will go to her. They have separate condos because they divorced when I was 14 and I lived with my mother so your argument doesn't hold much water. I didn't get the tiger woods treatment nigga.

[Anonymous No.16224821]

>>16223011
8 Values test is pretty good

[Anonymous No.16225782]

Anti Oedipus

[Anonymous No.16225790]

>>16221175
people being gay effects you?

[Anonymous No.16225794]

>>16224575
You realize antifa are all trannies right

[Anonymous No.16225803]

>>16220619
This.
The economy is irrelevant. At most it is the opiate of the masses.

[Anonymous No.16225828]

>>16222549
>Capitalism and technological “progress” are the same
retard

[Anonymous No.16225830]

>>16224575
Until Stalin initiated his purges and co-operation with the Church of Russia, yes.
Cthulhu always swims left.

[Anonymous No.16225835]

>>16224662
Confederacy of Dunces
American Psycho
Infinite Jest

:%)

[Anonymous No.16225838]

>>16220700
Ahem

[Anonymous No.16225841]

>>16225838
Ahem.

[Anonymous No.16225842]

>>16220567
as usual, lots of CIA-brains on here who're desperate to reveal how based they are by defaming marxist theory because... doritos taste good

anyway this novel does it pretty well imo

[Anonymous No.16225859]

>>16222273
Okay Cucky.

[Anonymous No.16225860]

>critique of capitalism thread
>/pol/retards immediately start criticizing communism
Tedious clockwork.

Riddle me this, faggots. When a capitalist grain producer fertilizes his shit with xenoestrogenic compounds, and a capitalist government does not interfere because environmental laws are not laissez-faire capitalist and hinder profits and wealth, and you all turn into low-T pseudotrannies with sperm counts like a 102-year old man, then why do you cope with this fact by criticizing communism?

[Anonymous No.16225862]

>>16225841
Kek. Thanks for proving my point.

[Anonymous No.16225882]

You're not estranged from your species-being, you're just depressed.

[Anonymous No.16225909]

>>16225860
Funny how ‘capitalism’ is for most something religious. The moment someone critiques it, people mostly Americans get into a fissy fit of rage. It is just children arguing in bad faith. There will always be sought after a balance between laissez faire and corrections to the system. And that is fine.

[Anonymous No.16225920]

>>16224444
Dumbass. It is not about competing, but more about you being given a fair chance to education.

[Anonymous No.16225931]

>>16225862
Kek. Thanks for proving my point.

[Anonymous No.16225942]

>>16225931
Where did marx say in Das Kapital that we should lick nigger boots? It seems to be the number one hobby of neoliberals (Capitalists)

[Anonymous No.16225949]

>>16225942
>NNOOOOO THEY'RE NOT US!!

[Anonymous No.16225957]

>>16225949
They are to us what maga retards ar eto nationalists.

[Anonymous No.16225970]

>>16225957
Bunkerchan is also 90% trannies.

[Anonymous No.16226070]

>>16221479
Thanks

[Anonymous No.16226225]

What I want
>Please don’t track and censor me Google

What they want
>60% of your income goes to sexual reassignment surgery for orphaned white children

[Anonymous No.16226231]

>>16220619
literally this but read ellul instead

[Anonymous No.16226319]

>>16224444
Your country is literally on fire

[Anonymous No.16226337]

>>16226319
Funny enough it's only in democrat cities where their marxist pets are lighting everything on fire.

[Anonymous No.16226680]

>>16225859
kek nice quote