luka
Well-known member
@thirdform set this lad straight he's saying you're right wing
One of the unspoken laws of Dissensus is that everything, sooner or later, comes back to Spengler.edit: by true, I mean those whose perspective is most aligned with the world historical spirit, such and such, and so on.
Could some real marxists, today, pass as right-wingers?
Very true - a ton of ambiguity here. I guess one of the debates would be just that, what is meant by marxist. I would say anyone who abides by an ideology that is (directly? indirectly?) in compliance with discourse from Marx or other marxists, is a marxist. Since there is a spectrum or variety of positions that would thus qualify, would some of them pass as right wing - and which ones?
And I'm starting to wonder if marxism isn't limited to anti-capitalism. Granted, it could entail a very generalized and abstract interpretation of his work, but I wouldn't consider such an interpretation to be unreasonable, especially considering how abstract he got (from what I've read).
This is a pivotal debate for me, and one that greatly confounds me, especially now that woke capitalism promises (or threatens) to become even more of a reality.
I think opposing capitalism, radically, means opposing the way matter and intelligence evolves, universally. That said, there is a ton of disagreeable ethical baggage thrown onto most conceptions of capitalism, that that baggage is more than likely non-essential. It's like being allergic to the air around you - which seems to shed a light on (what appears to me to be) the general impotence of the Marxist project since, what, neoliberalism?
So a "pro-capitalist" marxism would shift its frame of reference from the setting in which capitalism contends with other potential economic -isms, to the setting in which capitalism is itself the stage on which contend different flavors of capitalism, of which there are an infinite variety. This doesn't necessarily preclude the eventual emergence of communism, but it does add a whole other gauntlet to run before we get there.
Maybe I'm drinking the "tech-bro" koolaid, but it seems like communism, proper, is only possible if there is some kind of superhuman intelligence that is governing us, one whose bias is virtually undetectable, and next to objective.
Whether that amounts to a utopia or a dystopia, depends on whether or not we continue to indulge our allergy to capitalism. I think anti-capitalism, radically, is a denial of the cosmos. That said, for most people "anti-capitalism" simply means an opposition to the ethical murkiness of capitalism, which is far more reasonable and far less radical than the anti-capitalism I have in mind.
In fact, I might even up the ante and argue that any radical anti-bigotry needs to overcome its allergy/phobia of capitalism, in order to start making the next wave of progress.
Maybe its because I'm not familiar at all with Burke (seriously couldn't tell you a thing about him), but this feels like a close-shave miss, almost landing me. Again, I could be mistaken in seeing it that way.you think too much like a Burkeian coming to terms with the transition from feudalism to capitalism, despite the world being 200 years ahead of you. Life does not revolve around discourse, it revolves around the production and reproduction of real life. intelligence comes after that, not before it. now stop waffling and study.
Another thing I cannot yet appreciate - no nothing of Spengler either, other than what I can unpack from the title "The Decline of the West". Is it really about cycles and phases of prosperity? Or does it not get that metaphysical?One of the unspoken laws of Dissensus is that everything, sooner or later, comes back to Spengler.
Maybe its because I'm not familiar at all with Burke (seriously couldn't tell you a thing about him), but this feels like a close-shave miss, almost landing me. Again, I could be mistaken in seeing it that way.
I'm trying to understand, and comes to term with, that transition because it would (or could) let me break through fundamental lenses that have been invisible to me, and largely invisible to all of us. Otherwise, no conception I have of the stuff in the following 200 years could be properly contextualized, no? That's just where I am in understanding this - in trying to.
Maybe I am betraying an idealism here, but half of the fight, in my eyes, involves contending with the leading theory of history, contending for its own sake. The way to reconcile that with a proper materialism (which you seem to be much more acute to than I), I am not sure of, primarily because I live in a privileged, almost entirely abstract world (the result of trying to understand). But surely discourse, or the ideas at its hearts, are not down a one-way stream from materialism, or the production at its heart?
And I admit here, my usage of the word "intelligence" is pretty libertine and far-out. I don't mean a metric of smartness, of cognitive ability, or abstraction and pattern identification/recognition. I don't know how that stuff is even measured, when it comes down to it, and the matter itself is rife with fallacies, no? (IQ tests, etc.)
By intelligence I mean the imaginary forces that "guide" or steer the development of matter all the way up the ladder of physics, and actually towards dematerialization. Its a cosmology that I cannot (yet?) see around, and thus is beginning to register to me as absolute. I think there is a very marginal correlation between this kind of force, and what we consider intelligence/smartness. This force is more correlated to physical information density (moore's law?).
And I am rather strung out, and largely guilty of the kind of pseudo-studying you mention. I would rather err on the side of extensivity, and strive to reconcile it with intensivity.
And I'd be interested in your thoughts on lsd. I admit, you perplex me.
tech bros famously never deign to learn the nuts and bolts of programming they just want to be snake oils salesmen. It's why they are aghast that most banks and airports use ibm or msDos terminals. the cost to upgrade the operating OS's in airports would be colossal beyond belief, worldwide. but you try telling these Asimov nincompoops this.
I hate that.your thoughts are jumbled and frankly scattershot.
'"Legacy code" often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.'
Bjarne Soustrup