/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7054546]

Is there really a counter to the "human nature" argument that so saturates Marxist debate?

[Anonymous No.7054569]

That is, the argument that humans are greedy and corrupt easily.

[Anonymous No.7054584]

>>7054546
yes, to stop reading a book for more than 5 minutes and go into the world

[Anonymous No.7054589]

>>7054584
Personal attack.
I do have a social life.

[Anonymous No.7054636]

>>7054546
Society has overall become nicer to live in over the course of history. The left generally takes the position that this is due to society overcoming the destructive aspects of human nature one by one, while the right leans more towards the position that those destructive tendencies havemt gone anywhere but are instead artfully manipulated and put to work. This exact language isn't used often but it underpins a lot of positions. Tell me which sounds more credible.

[Anonymous No.7056670]

>>7054546
The human nature argument is pretty weak. A better argument is how democracy is inherently winner take all, privatizes gains while socializing failures, and lacks a method to restrict economic resources only going to what is truly useful. We shouldn't take human nature always being greedy as an universal, but our systems should be robust enough that competition helps people.

[Anonymous No.7056684]

>>7054546

Althusser has a pretty good argument about the dangers of Marxist humanism and utilizing "human nature" arguments. Pretty good stuff.

[Anonymous No.7056714]

>>7056684
Althusser essentialises the party as the transcendent master signifier. Projecting "human nature" onto a universal world spirit that is the Communist Party Soviet Union is even more pathetic than Sartre's ramblings.

[Anonymous No.7056761]

>>7056714
>Projecting "human nature" onto a universal world spirit that is the Communist Party Soviet Union

This seems radically different from what I read in " For Marx". His whole deal was that there is no "human nature" for us to restore, such a term is mere ideology, and what we need is only Marxist methodology - understanding that there is historical materialism first and foremost and that we should not be smuggling ideology from the outside into it. There is no static end goal of historical materialism, no pseudo-biblical return to the garden of eden in "self consciousnes" and freedom. He removes the Hegelian teleology from it entirely and simply submits everything to the flux of history and our ability to distill out some reality from ideology- but never completely.

[Anonymous No.7056770]

How does it saturates Marxist debate?
Marxism is an examination of production and production is how mankind departs from nature. Human nature is an oxymoron.

>>7056714

Althusser was a Maoist. And recent events aside, the CCP might just be a universal world spirit.

[Anonymous No.7056786]

>>7054546
Well Marxism takes human nature into account for one. Marx sees human nature as materially determined.

But more to the point, I'd be very hesitant to assume that the social system we have currently is in line with human "nature". Literally every social system has assumed it upheld a natural order. The only true human nature is adaptation.

[Anonymous No.7056802]

>>7054636
>while the right leans more towards the position that those destructive tendencies havemt gone anywhere but are instead artfully manipulated and put to work.

The American right certainly doesn't take this position. Their position is better summarized by saying that society hasn't become nicer at all, it's simply become more tolerant of vices.

[Anonymous No.7056803]

>>7056770
>Althusser was a Maoist.
That'd be difficult inside the PCF m80.

[Anonymous No.7056807]

I hate this board so much,

[Anonymous No.7056823]

>>7056761
We seem to have read very very different Althussers. The role of "history" in the Althusser I have read is that it is determined by the dialectic that exists prior to it. The world-spirit to which human social relations process is that of the correct reading of diamat: the ideology of the CPSU.

Thompson's debates are enlightening in this regard between the specificity of the British school of historicist marxism compared to the "structuration" and "final determination" of the Althusserians.

[Anonymous No.7057072]

>>7056802
Big picture, American republicans definitely believe that they live a more comfortable lifestyle with greater average wealth than in any century prior to this one. They chalk this up to a triumph of capitalism. Wanting to freeze the economy and technology where it is today isn't the same as wanting to live like medieval serfs.

[Anonymous No.7057640]

op here

I was just saying all my friends go like "but anon, communism=dictators and dictators get greedy and evil!"

Some of you answered my question. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.7057645]

>>7054546
We don't need to talk about ideologies anymore.
That time in history is over.
Everything is business now.
Politicians are just talking heads and corporations are the key figures in globalisation.
They buy countries like people buy snacks at the store.
Stop talking about political wealth distribution systems like they are still relevant/possible to implement.
It's embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.7057650]

>>7057640
Communist ethos, as one of the revolutionary class-consciousnesses of the working class can't be produced by argument with student intellectual. It can only be produced by class struggle. This is what we call "proletarian praxis," learning by living the struggle. There is little point in arguing with undergraduates about Marxism.

Read Melvin Dubofsky (1969) We Shall Be All; A History of the IWW.

[Anonymous No.7057654]

>>7057645
You seem like a conceited prick, which is even worse because you really don't know as much as you claim to know.

[Anonymous No.7057670]

>>7057650
I'm not particularly leaning towards Marxist ideology myself, I just knew it couldn't be shut down by such a simple argument and wanted to know how one would counter it. I'm only just getting into philosophy.

[Anonymous No.7057687]

>>7057670
Thesis 11

[Anonymous No.7057780]

Human nature is conditioned by factors that shift dynamically through time.

Waged-labor is not human nature, it had to be forcibly created through discipline, legal punishments for vagrancy, and destitution of landed labor.

[Anonymous No.7057788]

>>7054569
>>7054546

What are you fucking talking about?

[Anonymous No.7057801]

>>7057788
>Marxism proposes the dissolution of the state; 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'
>people object to this by pointing out that, due to self-interested human nature ('greedy and corruptible'), this could never work in practice.

[Anonymous No.7057818]

>>7057650
This is incredibly true, but rather than simply read about class consciousness in an outside manner (by reading histories of class struggle), get a job and read "The Working Day" from Capital.

A professor can harp one and on about temporality and capitalism but reading Capital on the bus to work and exhausted on the ride home is a crash course in communist conciousness.

[Anonymous No.7057825]

>>7057818
I'm assuming that OP is a bourgeois intellectual in training, and so that the dictum
Get a job
Join the union
Shoot your boss
won't be applicable as they'll always have an outside class position.

[Anonymous No.7057847]

>>7057818
Yeah, this is also why the university is only the bastion of the most ephemeral and fickle "leftists". The stereotype that only the young are leftists is largely true, but only for the middle class.

Unfortunately, my experience in the American workforce are of people without any class consciousness anyways, without solidarity, and--in many ways--even completely divorced from their own work. The American worker would need to seize self-consciousness in full before they could even fathom class-consciousness.

The true leftist movements have traction in the third world, but this too is a dead end for a number of reasons I do not want to get into (but is largely self-evident).

I am pessimistic. I believe in the left in an ideal sense, but I do not believe that mankind will beat capitalism. Capitalism will destroy mankind, I believe that literally, it is a system which slowly erodes our own participation in the economic cycle. It will eventually erode us totally. Automation will penetrate all aspects of life, including consumption.

[Anonymous No.7057864]

>>7057847
Sounds like your problem is a lack of experience of class consciousness combined with a formal ideology. Return, as ever, to the factory. We recompose ourselves.

[Anonymous No.7057876]

>>7057847
Although I might get labeled a romantic, I don't think humanity is necessarily doomed to wither into meaninglessness. I think the important thing to understand is that people don't follow revolutions, but revolutionaries; they don't risk their emotional and material security for their ideals and ideologies, but for people who embody them. What is needed is someone with both the charisma to appeal to people and the skills and education to diagnose and treat comsumer capitalist society's illnesses. Rational theory and thought are important, but it is can be seen through all of human history that all major reforms are the result of an autocracy, or at least a dynamic personality.

[Anonymous No.7057880]

>>7057801

No you dumb cuck.

The argument is that the best means for checking the self-interest of one person is the self-interest of everybody else. That's why competitive capitalism is the most successful and prosperous economic system ever devised.

[Anonymous No.7057882]

>>7057864
I'm as weary of the shift away from work on the left as most people but we can't just read Capital and presume that we can adopt the analysis of Industrial production at face value.

There are certainly comrades in other countries still laboring in satanic mills but contemporary Marxists have to recognize the shifting nature of work. Not only that, but capital beyond the workplace. Debord is just as essential as Marx.

[Anonymous No.7057883]

>>7057882
Well, while I disagree with the theoretical attitudes of the post-autonomists in creating new categories of value, I strongly feel that the traditional meaning of value in capital can be analysed as having been made "social" in the sense that all relationships are converted into value producing relationships.

The key here in the concept of "unwaged labour" that has been developed in transnational labour history to explain positions like slavery in European controlled America.

[Anonymous No.7057884]

>>7057880
I hope you realize that not even right wing economists beleive that.

[Anonymous No.7057896]

>>7057884

doesn't surprise me because right wing economists don't know a fucking thing. nobody has understood what makes capitalism work besides the Austrian school. 19th century was the most prosperous in history for a reason. socialism didn't get us where we are today

[Anonymous No.7057899]

>>7057896
Not even austrians are retarded enough to deny the existence of negative externalities. They just conveniently ignore them.

[Anonymous No.7057902]

lil tip for all you young budding Marxists
give it up, the dream is over, capitalism will die in 50-100 years when we can construct our own realities via uploaded consciousness at which point economics won't matter
we're not going to space either
sorry you didn't get to realise your cultural and aesthetic dead end

[Anonymous No.7057907]

>>7057902
>scientism
Tell me more about your theory of language?

[Anonymous No.7057909]

>>7057902
also capitalism will defeat whatever deviant identities you deploy in an attempt to destroy it
see: caitlyn jenner

[Anonymous No.7057910]

The idea of "human nature" implies that somebody who is better than everyone else is no longer human.

[Anonymous No.7057951]

>>7057899

Negative externality?

Government creates more of those than any form of a market ever will. More government means more negative externalities.

Are you completely detached from reality or something? Making decisions with zero accountability is the definition of government.

[Anonymous No.7057955]

>>7057907
that isn't scientism at all you big dumb dumb
also can you fuckers stop threatening violent revolution and actually do it it's been almost 150 years

[Anonymous No.7057962]

>>7057955
You seem to have an unfounded belief in the computability of consciousness. Good work you religious cretin.

[Anonymous No.7057972]

>>7057951
Ha, you are literally spouting nonsense. What you wrote means nothing. Government "making decisions with zero accountability" has nothing to do with externalities.
On the other hand, since your post admits the existence of negative externalities (which i don't think you know what is, but i'll play along), and your initial statement was universal and therefore refutable with a counterexample, you just admitted you were wrong. Nicely done.

[Anonymous No.7057973]

>>7054546
It's human nature to shit outdoors but we didn't have a problem overcoming that

[Anonymous No.7057980]

>>7057645
>history is over
Fukuyama pls go.

[Anonymous No.7057988]

>>7057645
>we don't need to talk about ideologies anymore
>everything is business now
what's an ideological state apparatus
pick one ok

[Anonymous No.7057990]

>>7057972

You must be a high school student or something, so I'll cut you a break.

The economic market is regulated by government but it is also self-regulating. The political market is not regulated by anything except the electoral process. Government produces things as well. They spend your money to do it, and their output is measured in consumption, but the government is a producer. Welfare is a kind of product, as are food stamps, social security and the like. These have a strongly negative effect on society as a whole, but the politicians who push these programs and the government bureaucrats who administer them pay no price for it. That is the definition of a negative externality.

Stick to whatever liberal arts major you already signed up for. Economics is not for you.

[Anonymous No.7058001]

>>7057988
>what's an ideological state apparatus
Althusserian bullshit

[Anonymous No.7058019]

>>7057962
once again that isn't scientism you big dork

[Anonymous No.7058033]

>>7057990
>You must be a high school student or something, so I'll cut you a break.
>Stick to whatever liberal arts major you already signed up for. Economics is not for you.
Like 99% of internet austrians, you suffer from the Dunning–Kruger effect.

>That is the definition of a negative externality.
"A negative externality occurs when an individual or firm making a decision does not have to pay the full cost of the decision. If a good has a negative externality, then the cost to society is greater than the cost consumer is paying for it."
"A negative externality is a cost that is suffered by a third party as a result of an economic transaction. In a transaction, the producer and consumer are the first and second parties, and third parties include any individual, organisation, property owner, or resource that is indirectly affected."
"Negative externalities occur when the consumption or production of a good causes a harmful effect to a third party."
http://economics.fundamentalfinance.com/negative-externality.php
http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Externalities.html
http://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfailure/negative-externality/
To be clear since you don't sound very bright, an externality isn't everything that happens in a society and has an effect on others. Saying that the government takes your money and gives it away and that the action has negative effects is not an externality, the same way robbery isn't an externality.

I haven't even read austrians claiming shit like this. You are making up your own definition of externalities. Which is even more retarded considering you were already proven wrong regardless of this side discussion.

[Anonymous No.7058034]

>>7058019
>unfounded belief in "science"
>not scientism

[Anonymous No.7058038]

>>7057896
>Austrian-tard

Shit-posting taken to the extreme. When will you realize that your ideology is a fucking joke:

>can't into macroeconomics
>accidentally subscribes to dualism
>believes the satisfaction of desire is the key to happiness

Are we done, now? Can you smear shit all over another online forum that will still accept you mongoloids?

[Anonymous No.7058050]

>>7058034
Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most "authoritative" worldview or the most valuable part of human learning - to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

[Anonymous No.7058066]

>>7058050
Again, what theory of linguistics supports your belief that consciousness is computable.

[Anonymous No.7058088]

>>7058066
I just feel it in my bones dude

[Anonymous No.7058095]

>>7058088
MIMA IS DEAAAAAAAAAD

[Anonymous No.7058103]

>>7058095

[Anonymous No.7058139]

>>7058103
Even Tōhōs know that capitalism is obsolete

[Anonymous No.7058156]

>>7058139
I have some questions
Why did Remillia sell the SDM stock in the first place? She already owns the building and the land. If she decided to sell the stock to Chen then it's her own fault. Is she retarded?

[Anonymous No.7058164]

>>7058156
M—C…P…C'—M'.

The traditional aristocracy kept their investment in low rate of profit agriculture, whereas the new rising bourgeoisie invested in high rate of return ever expanding capital modes. Chen has simply forced Remilla into the corner where SDM no longer turns a sufficient profit. Ever heard of a profitable library?

[Anonymous No.7058165]

>>7058095
>>7058103
>>7058139
>>7058156
>these are the people that are expected to take part in a violent revolution

[Anonymous No.7058170]

>>7058165
We know the difference between /a/ and /jp/

[Anonymous No.7058232]

>>7058164
But Remillia OWNS the mansion already. She already owns the library and all the books inside. Patchouli, Sakuya, and Meiling already work for a pittance because it gives them a place to live. It's not a fucking business, it's a house that she already owns.
It's her property. Sure, she might not be able to pay the maids, but that's secondary.
Remillia still needs to eat, but she can just get a part time job or something.
>>7058165
>implying I'm a filthy commie

[Anonymous No.7058240]

>>7058232
Everyone has to pay to gapwhore. Gensokyo isn't soil in allody.

[Anonymous No.7058244]

>>7058240
That's not how taxes work.
You don't pay tax on an income you don't have, and we can assume Remillia has already paid the tax on her manison.

Yukari isn't a whore, ftfy

[Anonymous No.7058250]

>>7058244
Do learn about land tax. It is recurrent based on capital value, not intermittent based on income.

[Anonymous No.7058252]

>>7058244
>Yukari isn't a whore, ftfy

It is official that she is.

[Anonymous No.7058262]

>>7058250
Feels good not having a property tax in New Zealand.

>>7058252
Are the official Touhou mangas and novels any good?

[Anonymous No.7058269]

>>7058262
>Feels good not having a property tax in New Zealand.
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/ratesbuildingproperty/ratesvaluations/yourrates/Pages/rateschangesfromjuly2014.aspx

>Are the official Touhou mangas and novels any good?
I enjoyed SSiB, but then again, I like the Eintei War Criminals Old Folks Home Association.

[Anonymous No.7058280]

>>7058269
Aucklandfags can get fucked.
Anyway, doesn't the property tax argument support the free market? Remillia wouldn't lose her property.

[Anonymous No.7058287]

I love hearing you little commies whisper these sweet nothings to each other in such earnestness, its really endearing

Let me know how things go, I'll be watching telly

[Anonymous No.7058293]

>>7058280
Chen got her in debt, and then foreclosed. Setting taxes at a higher level than the lowest level of profit of agricultural industry is a standard way to beggar your neighbour and steal their land. Every bad year you offer more credit.

[Anonymous No.7058300]

>people arguing about japanese cartoons in a thread on Marxist critique

Shiggy

[Anonymous No.7058325]

>>7058293
Where are you getting this idea that the taxes will be set at a higher level than that of agricultural profit? Gensokyo still needs to eat.

[Anonymous No.7058326]

>>7058300
>japanese cartoons
You're new here.

[Anonymous No.7058327]

>>7058325
>Where are you getting this idea that the taxes will be set at a higher level than that of agricultural profit? Gensokyo still needs to eat.
British political economy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[Anonymous No.7058335]

>>7054546
I once argued with a guy who said there was a tribe in Africa that doesn't have the concept of "ownership" and everything is owned by the entire tribe, so that it is based on culture that humans are greedy, and not on nature.

My rebuttal was that while that might be true for a small tribe, we don't have an example on a larger scale, so likely progress and individual greediness are strongly intervened.
And even if that might not be true, he is free to go to Africa to start communism in a small tribe, but for the world at large it would be too late since the "culture of greediness" already exists.

Obviously I am not sure if what that guy said was even correct.

[Anonymous No.7058348]

>>7054569
You don't believe that why? Humans *are* corrupt and greedy. You're better off attacking Marxism from another angle.

[Anonymous No.7058421]

as someone definitely on the right I've always thought the human nature argument was weak as fuck

[Anonymous No.7059975]

>>7057882
I am not an end-of-work advocate. I just see industrialization as the core problem. Capitalism is a mere ideological extension of that.

[Anonymous No.7059989]

>>7057896
>19th century was the most prosperous in history
Uhhh.....

[Anonymous No.7060023]

>>7058335
he basically just said that its more cultural then some big Other (muh human nature). Its a reasonable assumption

[Anonymous No.7060038]

>>7056786
This. You explained it very welll.

[Anonymous No.7061480]

>>7059975
You're around communists here mate. When you start creating random new idealist categories, we expect an explication, not just a gesture.

Our categories are well defined, if materially determined and debated. Your categories are four unexplicated nouns.

[Anonymous No.7061521]

>>7054546
A Conflict of Visions.