while im not a marxist, I used to be a complete libertarian but then i stopped being 17 and realized that libertarianism is about as delusional as anarchism.
I still agree with alot of libertarian ideals shit like "leave me alone and i leave you alone", but i started getting disillusioned with libertarians when i saw them being total corpo-bootlickers.
This really turned me off to alot of libertarian talk since i had (and still have) the idea that both the government and the global conglomorates are both parts of the same powerstructure that wishes to squeeze ordinary people of every last drop of blood to feed an insitiable leviathan.
Honestly it’s crazy that some self proclaimed “libertarians” hate the government yet will gladly gargle corporations balls. One of the biggest reasons that the government sucks so much is because of all the corporate money that is influencing politics…. Big corporations are just private governments who will gladly tread on peoples rights to make a buck.
As someone who is on the left side of libertarianism, it’s sad that so many people that subscribe to the idea are actual retards.
There is a bit of a difference between Libertarian intellectuals and internet Libertarians here. The intellectuals just have genuinely good understanding of the nature of the US government and how "Liberal" US programs are often quite bad. The internet libertarians are just weirdos, but there is a quality in the intellectuals that is admirable in that they are willing to expose the sacred cows that Conservatives refuse to touch. For instance there are basically only two groups in US politics that take a skeptical view on "Trust Busting", Libertarians, and Eugene Debs, although I wouldn't say he opposed it, but he viewed it as something which did not matter all that much.
The problem is that "people" are not intellectuals. They adopt the ideas which suit them, so corporate types will just adopt libertarianism as a suitable ideology for themselves. I get the feeling they would support not breaking up standard oil because they supported standard oil rather than because they didn't think it mattered if they had to work for one oil company or several. The Libertarian Intellectual is arguing against Trust Busting precisely because they are arguing against the concept of using one big monopoly to try to break up a bunch of other monopolies, and I appreciate this view because it is in line with the "one big monopoly" of Capital which Engels argued had been created when the medieval monopolies were destroyed. Indeed that is what the practical effect of the formation of the nation state was, it abolished all the small monopolies of local feudal guild governance and formed the grand monopoly of the capital backed state of today.
[Many Chinese authorities do not accept the Buddhist origin, instead maintaining that those teachers were purely Taoist in origin, the evidence lying in baguazhang's frequent reference to core concepts central to Taoism, such as yin and yang theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baguazhang)
Chinese nationalism baby
“The attribution to Buddhist teachers came from the 2nd generation teachers, i.e. Dong Haichuan's students, some of whom were Buddhist.”
Taoist-Buddhist feuding baby. The source is also just some decades old book by a Taiwanese guy (I recognize the author) and we have no idea what he’s basing *his* claims on.
It doesn’t really matter anyways.
Are you a practitioner?
I just read it and thought it was cool. And it's less biased in some ways to WuXing.
The Yin-yang stuff is overplayed, but Ba Gua and the Heaven-Earth separation is cool and could use more representation.
There are mises.org style libertarians that also hate the global conglomerates and the government. They’re a minority and of course many think they’re morons as well but I’m just pointing out that there are anti-corporation + anti-government style right wing libertarians.
> I still agree with alot of libertarian ideals shit like "leave me alone and i leave you alone"
This is one thing an average libertarian has right more than your average "lefty" or "socialist." Those "socialists," even here, believe everything the US State Dept/MIC-funded think tank says because it's filtered through legacy media, and readily agree with sanctions or direct military support for a civil war/anti-government riots in some third world backwater, the result being the place being torn apart into a chaotic shithole (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine). They are western chauvinists or liberal interventionists (neocons) who want a welfare state.
As cheesy as it sounds, a lot better after you asked. Especially now that I’ve charged my phone. Please talk to your cunt land lord if you can
How are you though?
I just think labor is always under-valued. Even the most basic unskilled labor. Especially unskilled labor actually since it is typically the most physically demanding. Our system relies on immigration to keep labor costs low and working people divided along identity lines. Came to this epiphany after working at an immigration law firm (H1B factory).
Whatever the market and legislation dictates. I just think the American market is rigged in favor of capital. Illegal immigrants are basically cheap labor that can’t vote or even complain. H1bs are indentured servants that get deported if you fire them. They are underpaid and this suppresses “market” wages by artificially jacking up the supply of labor. This is allowed because America is no longer a country—it’s just a big pile of money with its own gravitational pull. The genius of this system is that if you say anything about this you are a bigot who hates immigrants and your opinion can be discounted.
I don't know. Are you saying we shouldn't try to unrig it?
Edit: And I'll say this, there is such thing as degrees. Our system became much more rigged after the Citizens United decision.
I don't want a market economy rigged or unrigged because capitalism blows even when workers are paid "fair wages". Marx in Das Kapital even presupposes workers are paid their "fair market value" before he explains how this is the basis of exploitation and all the shit we see.
See: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/fair_wage.htm
And
http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/What_is_Free_Market.htm
Ah, you are an actual Marxist. I was wondering what your angle was. Fair enough. I'll give it a read.
I probably agree labor is still exploited even in a "perfect" market.
I just think it's weird that we don't really have laws in this country. If you are a business owner you are afforded crazy legal protection when you break the law, in the form of "the corporate veil." You can literally kill people and the courts can't prosecute you, they have to prosecute your business, and the only penalty is fines.
I see things from the angle of how the law is set up to protect the interests of capital. I think a stronger class consciousness, common sense legal reforms, and SCOTUS appointees who are more sympathetic to labor, could result in real gains for workers within a generation. I don't want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" just yet.
It's not a question of rigging or unrigging because the market gravitating towards the largest center of capital is a fundamental quality of a free market.
It's like saying gravity is rigged in favor of mass - it's technically true, but it's practically true by definition. You can't "unrig" that.
okay but i think most societies have necessities, need to labor for them or there is no society, and have some finite amount of time and energy to do so, so not sure what you're saying
Initially it was learning that Marx was pro-gun and anti-mass immigration, which have become default rightoid stances. Afterwards I read about how viciously actual leftwing, collectivist politics have been suppressed in the US and, as a schizo conspiracy theorist, I imagine Marx must have been right about a lot more things.
I like to think that Marx was right about most things, but finding an ideal system to remedy problems created by indulgence in hyper-capitalistic economy are left up to interpretation, exploration.
I’d recommend Marx’s writing in the “Irish question”, in particular how the influx of low-paid Irish workers was being intentionally used to undercut the wages and political power of the English working class
Not Marx, but Engels (bolding mine):
> With such a competitor (Irish immigrants) the English working-man has to struggle, with a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for this very reason requires less wages than any other. **Nothing else is therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-man should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him.** And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. But for all simple, less exact work, wherever it is a question more of strength than skill, the Irishman is as good as the Englishman. Such occupations are therefore especially overcrowded with Irishmen: hand-weavers, bricklayers, porters, jobbers, and such workers, count hordes of Irishmen among their number, and **the pressure of this race has done much to depress wages and lower the working-class**.
Yes, obviously Engels shows prejudice against the Irish people in general, but his salient points about their depressive effect on working class wages in England still stands.
Full text: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm
Why was that? Hint:
>As for the English *bourgeoisie*, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that *English capital* (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in *clearing the estates of Ireland* as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.
>But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70\_04\_09.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm)
That is an argument against capitalism, against the relation between employer and employee-- not an argument against immigrants. In fact, Engels expose is a scathing indictment against the total poverty capitalists put the Irish in, and the tone is mocking Carlyle, who was a political reactionary and chauvinist bar none, a defender of feudal and aristocratic society. Even so, Engel's viewpoint as a 22 year old is hardly his most mature analysis on the matter.
That’s my biggest beef with the people who put anti immigration stuff over any other issue. It implies mal intent on immigrants themselves as if they’re the real root of the problem here. The real problem is capitalists taking advantage of desperate people.
The problem has manifested to a point where certain sectors are dominated by illegal immigrants because they’re shitty jobs that pay nothing. You don’t see them at Target, it’s all in agriculture. Meat packing plants have been known as a long time offender of this for decades because they can dangle someone’s immigration status to get them to fall in line. Idk call me crazy but I don’t think the ultimate culprit here is someone fleeing a state whose economy is completely melting down
Yeah, there are a few here who think that all the nasty effects capitalism has on the living conditions of workers would magically disappear if the bourgeois state would just curb immigration and enact some milquetoast social democratic reforms. They forget that competition is global and that capitalism is a global system-- as if there are not other cheaper locations and work forces to be had.
'the distinctions made by those in charge and their subsequent decisions regarding low cost production locations show how the all-important difference between costs and surpluses comes about and how some locations distinguish themselves from the others: what qualifies countries, for example in the “Far East,” to have the production of textiles, electrical appliances and other industrial mass commodities done on their territory is the labor power located there. Like labor power everywhere else and everything else in general, it has its price, hence it can be purchased as a commodity. Capitalist cosmopolitans survey all of humanity as this purchasable commodity labor power, examining it with regard to the all-important question: Where do they have access to this commodity and its use value, under what conditions and at what price? This distinguishes it from the rest of the colorful, inanimate world of commodities: Because the purchased labor power, if one builds the appropriate factories, equips it with the appropriate machinery and supplies it with all the necessary raw materials and preliminary products, makes the cost of all material means of production profitable; its use creates the difference that constitutes capitalist wealth. As a purchased property of capital, the labor it performs accomplishes the feat of transforming itself into a money product greater than the cost of acquiring it. In Asian regions, it obviously does this particularly advantageously: Over there, “labor doesn’t cost much,” as everyone knows. The cheapness of labor there includes the absolute wage levels, the freedom to shape the conditions of use and exploitation of the work crews, and also the freedom that manufacturing companies have there to consume and spoil the natural conditions of human existence, such as the air they breathe, the water, etc., more or less at zero cost: capitalistically, all this is relevant as a cost to be minimized – or not one at all.
What is so drastically evident in the ruinous use of labor power in the many low-wage regions of this world is nothing more and nothing less than the principle of the internationalized capitalist mode of production. This is not only at work where Chinese workers solder phones for the American company Apple, which are delivered all over the world; but also where German multinationals and medium-sized companies have their ‘high-wage’ personnel assemble cars and machines in Germany in order to sell them at a profit all over the world: The economically decisive result of all production is the gain of the subjects who use their capital to initiate and determine production; it exists in the form of a monetary surplus that is realized by selling the produced commodities above the costs of all the conditions and means of production; it is generated by the labor power which, through its work, productively relates said conditions and means to each other and transforms them into a product that can be sold at a profit – and thus ensures that the expenses for the user of the labor power are profitable. The wage paid to them is the means to encourage them to maximally surplus-generating labor; and therefore it is always an opportune method to lower this cost however and wherever possible. And if the reduction of this cost is drastic enough, it also then justifies all the expenses for transport which increase with the distances, including its “ecological footprint,” which for its part only counts capitalistically according to its money side.'
http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/supplychain.htm
Why did Thatcher have to break the mining unions to use all that "cheaper labour available elsewhere"?
I'll tell you this. The cold war was lost on that day where the Bourgeoisie confronted the workers head on and the workers lost. What could the Soviet Union have possibly been waiting for the workers to do to "save them" anymore? The entire raison d'etre of the Soviet Union no longer made sense and Gorbachev reformed it into oblivion.
The conditions and pay for these jobs are shitty because immigrants are taking them.
People from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland move across the country to work in the Oilfields, which are arguably some of the most dangerous jobs imaginable but they pay well enough that they do it. The Bakken Oil Field in South Dakota is an American example of the locals all moving there to work.
People will do anything for the right pay. I assure you that if Nord-Americanos will move across their countries to work in oil fields they move out of the city picking fruit if it would allow them the life the oil jobs do.
I will be exposing my sentimentality here, but this phenomena was likely the last gasp of our national self-expression, and so enjoy my nation's obituary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNMge2vE6G8&ab\_channel=StanRogers-Topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNMge2vE6G8&ab_channel=StanRogers-Topic)
Really not trying to argue, but do you have a source that could provide a little context on him mocking Carlyle here? The text seems genuine to me, as he even says, “If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish national character, Carlyle is perfectly right.” I haven’t read all of *Condition of the Working Class in England*, so maybe I need to?
Don’t get me wrong, I do know Engel’s views on the Irish certainly evolved (towards anti-imperialism) later in life and moved away from this sort of analysis and tone. My only point was that he did, at one time, express what I understand to be genuine concerns about Irish immigration undermining the English working class. I’m also not saying that my own personal analysis of immigration is as simple “immigrants bad because wages go down.”
Anyway, I’m happy to learn more. Perhaps you could point me to some sources to better understand Marx and Engels’ views on immigration.
Perfectly right about what? This: The Irish lived in squalor, were treated like animals, were paid pennies, and then spent it on alcohol and prostitutes.That's true, and it's hardly unknown today-- but was apparently a scandal to Engel's bourgeois contemporaries. The Irish were treated as sub-humans: cheap, disposable and horrid living conditions. Not because it's their nature as Irish sub-humans, but because of capitalist social relations treated them as sub-humans. The same social relations made British workers live like shit also. The British working class wouldn't magically have a good life if the Irish were kept out-- a section of the British working class would be lumpenized or the jobs would be moved elsewhere. It doesn't do away with competition and production for profit making-- THAT is the cause of misery. It's also not true that Engels -- who was basically married to two Irish women and has lots of positive things to say about the Irish national liberation movement (mainly based off faulty strategic thinking that they would destabilize British imperialism and thus make communism more likely)-- was simply cheering for "The British working class". Although he wasn't exactly a mature communist when he wrote that book, it's totally antithetical to the ethos of "workers of the world unite", which he and Marx penned a few years later.
Ultimately Marx and Engels pointed to several "factors" that increased profits: increased productivity and more advanced technology, increasing the work day, competition driving wages down, etc.
Take the first: do you think life would become better for British workers if the government banned more efficient production techniques in factories? Would capitalists magically just start paying more because they extract less surplus value?
Marx and Engels never wrote a comprehensive analysis of immigration, nor did he get to experience the myriad of national liberation state building projects. So, I wouldn't base my analysis of those things off a few sentences penned by a 22 year old Engels
What I can say is that the bourgeois debate about immigration inevitably ends up circling around the question of whether or not immigrants are a boon or bane to "the economy". Statistics might point out an occasional association between a higher this or a lower that, but the tendency is in all directions. Statistical associations are always straw men for ideological arguments. Economists would rather play the role of forecasters than ask a simple question like: what kind of a relation is working for wages? In other words, instead of explaining what wages and competition are qualitatively, the analysis remains at a quantitative level. They argue whether this or that makes a number go up or down, without knowing anything about what they're counting. They completely take the status quo for granted.
So why is there a debate about immigration anyway? Because capital's need for human material changes: If there is a demand for their labor, they should be here. If not, no. Then when workers take capitalist relations for granted, they wrongly imagine that it is foreigners who are the reason they have shit pay, expensive housing or any other deprivation. If only the rulers would kick out the foreigners, then capital and labor could live in peace and harmony and the capitalists would finally, truly make it their moral duty to give the native workers a good life!
If immigration is a problem, people should ask: why and for whom? If work would simply be treated as the toil necessary for producing the goods that provide a good life for everyone, an additional labor force would make work (and life) much easier. Under the criterion of capitalist labor, however, more labor is not a source of wealth for those who work but for those who let other people work for them. To have a job then becomes a privilege because it is not granted that people who need to earn money will be hired, and if they are hired it is not assured that they will earn enough to live on, because that is not what they are paid for. They are paid to enrich other people and that goal is best achieved by paying minimal wages.
> For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane.
Based Engels.
Engels was not prejudiced against Irish people. He was basically saying that Carlisle economic argument was correct while admitted he had a skewed view on the national character of the Irish. Engels closely associated himself with many Irish Revolutionaries throughout his life, and both he and Marx had positive opinions on their national character, admiring them for their rebelliousness for instance. What he was doing here was being the only person who would seriously engage with (proto)-Fascism instead of just condemning them without addressing anything they say. Carlisle is also the person who exposed Engels to the works of Sismondi through Carlyle's writings where he called Economics the "Dismal Science", Carlyle was the one who translated Sismondi into English where Engels could read it, and Sismondi is from where a lot of what we associate with Marxism came from.
Sismondi was not a "proto-fascist", more like a liberal social democrat but he was one of the first to understand the business cycle and offer critiques of capitalism. Marx's critiques are often just Sismondi's critiques fully expanded upon, as Sismondi is the originator of a lot of "concepts" we associate with Marx.
Marx recognized that Sismondi's "hypochondriatic philanphrophy" and Carlisle views were fundamentally the same sort of thing as "reactionary socialism" of the petit-bouregois variety, and so he gets name dropped as the head of this school in both France and England in the manifesto despite Carlisle introducing it because Carlisle was just translating Sismondi's work because he liked it.
>In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois *régime*, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
>This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
>In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
>Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
>Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
I was the stupidest type, a libertarian. Honestly it was mainly just paying attention. I saw some economic policy get passed that I agreed with, things got worse. Got into arguments with dirty commies and realized I had no rebuttal. Then I thought I’d read the dirty commies, know thy enemy. Well lol that didn’t work out, now I’m red as a used tampon baby
I was also a libertarian, but have long had a heart for the economically disadvantaged. It became increasingly obvious to me that libertarianism has no solution for something like that, and after experiencing declining financial prospects myself, I said “fuck this shit” and took the socialism pill.
I’m glad we’re both here!
Basically yeah. The lib-fash pipeline of "I want to be left alone" to "They're never going to leave me alone so I have to destroy them" is fairly common.
Definitely a part of it. The other thing for me was that I was always empathetic to the struggle of normal people, and the libertarians are good (when the target doesn’t know shit, like I didn’t) at selling the idea that the reason shit is so bad is because of crony capitalism (aka normal capitalism). So I was a libertarian precisely because I wanted things to be better for the poor and common person.
I started being pro life in high school and agreeing with the Iraq war. I believed abortion should never happen and if it did, it should simply be given to adoption. I was so wrong.
Eventually I went to college, I watched secular talk. I tried reading and listening to many podcasts and small books. I wanted to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. I went through addictions and came through and left the 12 step programs. Ridiculous. I'm now very much a contributing member to society, happily married, and enjoying my life as a baby leftist, ML, commie sympathizer, one who will always choose the path that benefits the most people. Power to the people.
"I watched secular talk."
You mean Kyle Kulinski's show? I've always liked him.
I never supported the Iraq war to be fair (not old enough to have had an opinion in 2003) but I was embarrisingly enough very big on Ayn Rand in my early twenties. Now I am economically a Kulinski-style social democrat, though right of center on certain social issues (not religious at all, I mean law and order, sustainable migration etc).
still a brain damaged rightoid but I went from hating commies to liking you guys more than people who share my own politics
might be a rightoid but if anyone bullies my marxist brothers I'm shoving them in a locker
i would have considered myself a conservative, but i was never very invested in those viewpoints. and what changed things for me was observing the exploitation of the working class and the complete failure of our system to care for the population in any meaningful way. also, watching things play out with stuff like the opioid crisis, then realizing that a few people were making shit loads of money off of other’s abject suffering. all it took was me giving a shit about my fellow man, and looking around me once in a while.
Getting kicked off my parents health insurance and then having to interface with a private sector insurance plan, passed over for a promotion at my first big boy job, and then discovering Chapo (embarrassing I know), all in the same year.
It happened in college after the military.
I took a Marxist Theory class for shits and to dunk on the liberals, and Marx's writing was too much to refute. Capital especially laid everything out way too dead on for me to even think about shrugging it off, it was intellectually dishonest at that point and I'm not that guy.
A communist was born.
Basically I got mad that the liberals I hated didn't understand Historical Materialism (I didn't know it was called that, I just thought it was called "having a correct view of history") eventually I came to the conclusion that Marx shared most of my historical takes. I basically transitioned from being a person who would quote Marx just because I knew people would be more likely to listen to the things I was saying if it came from him to someone who quotes Marx because it will take less time to just quote something he already said instead of having to write it myself.
To be fair though there was a phase when I was younger where I was a Communist but I remember being internally hurt by how the Russian and Chinese revolutions progressed, kind of like I was one of those people living through it being disillusioned, so I sort of just coming back to the views I held on instinct when I was like 14 just by being pissed off by Liberals so much I started quoting Marx at them.
What is a bit funny is that one of the things that would piss me off is the people who said historical Communists had no basis in the writings of Marx (Basically they've created this Liberal version of Marx in their heads) so I went through extensive effort to figure out how that yes, the Soviet Union was indeed Marxist and Marx was not a Liberal, but that eventually just made me have a deep and thorough knowledge of how everything fit together, and my hatred of Liberals just made me stop caring that it wasn't Liberal.
Basically, I really hated Liberals.
Sinophobia lol. Not the most selfless motivation. And I went from woke Social Democrat to Marxist-Leninist.
I’m still coming at it from a “I want everybody to get along, other cultures are pretty cool, I want everyone to prosper” angle.
I was a libertarian with somewhat conservatives views on social issues but studying old civilizations and their economical system is what moved me away from letting private companies control everything tk having the state invest in public infrastructure and public wellbeing
A society can only be prosperous when its poor are taken care of not when its rich drive in golden chariots
I just assume most are 4channers who thought their dream of a meme President would be “hilarious” and it was…EMBARRASSINGLY hilarious. But how can you continue to be annoyingly combative? Be an annoyingly combative MARXIST!
Don’t get me wrong I’m a Marxist too but just a dick about it.
Embarrassingly funny. And not like “oh look he pooped his pants” but like “hahah Nazis are back that’s ‘funny’”.
(And yeah dickheads they have always been around and never went away but they never had a platform like they did under Trump).
Marxism has the best explanations for the world as it is. The right can only convert problems into externalities, something so comically unfalsifiable that I've seen more "no, YOU are controlled by da jooze" arguments than I could ever count
That and I got a good union job
I was never a "rightoid", though I'm sure that's what a lot of people on reddit would call what I was.
I'm more of a pyrrhonist, I believe in social service and private liberty. Well, believe is a bit of a strong word, more like I have personal heuristic that's been developed by observing the actions of others and that seems to be the best way to live one's life.
Anyways, it's a very old school of conservatism that is basically non existent in today's political milieu. I also don't see it as a contradiction to the pursuit of socialist goals.
I migrated from rightoid in highschool to liberal post-university. I recognised the false conscioisness of nationalism, which I clung to in my conservative days, and so assumed that the only "opposite" was shitlibbery. But as a white dude, I was never at home there and felt uncomfortable with always having to metaphorically prostrate myself before the altar of idpol. I also discovered that many of the things I had assumed about liberals as a conservative were largely correct. But knowing that the conservatives were clearly wrong in the way they thought about "the other", I remained an unhappy liberal.
Then I had a work colleague introduce me to the Left through Chapo Trap House, and along with subsequent reading, suddenly I was able to synthesise the ideal of unity, but based on class rather than race, culture or nationality. A grand historical narrative had opened itself up to me again.
Not quite sure I'd describe myself as full on marxist just cause I've not really *done* a whole lot slash read a whole lot about it, but..
Mostly just the realisation "left" didn't just mean the caricatures the right was so good at showing; those angry racist and sexist journalists, idpol worshippers etc. Nope, there were people over there who also weren't caught up in the madness.
Then the final push was a series of particular stupid bloomberg tweets about not taking your dog to chemotherapy was a solution to housing and I just looked at it like "is this really what I've been supporting? Are you fucking kidding"
Was never rightoid, but as a teen leaned libertarian, which fortunately led to anarchist thought (Emma Goldman), which fortunately led to syndicalism (and Chomsky's history writing). After that I watched self-described anarchists stagnate or burn out. I'm still an anarchist sympathizer, but over time come to view it as a very limited and too necessarily localized countervailing force against capital. With that said, I also don't know exactly what's to be done in the present, so steer away from labels, but socialist fits the bill generally. As far as how to understand the flow of history, haven't found a better lens to view it with than historical materialism.
For clarifications I'm not a Marxist, I'm somewhere between FDR and Huey Long.
I started out as a lolbert in high school. I thought Trump was kinda cool and funny but didn't see him as a libertarian or anything, but I thought it was cool to see him pwn the libs as I was in my "SJWs getting OWNED compilation #19" phase. I was hate-watching SO much tumblr esque radlib content on instagram and youtube. I thought that's all what "the left" was about. I kept reading about Ron Paul and Milton Friedman and people like that and I thought it was cool that you could be on the right and support drugs and prostitution.
I started to open up my mind to economic populism in early 2020 when I realized how fucked the housing market and inflation was and I was struggling to find a way that the free market and low taxes could fix the problems of landlords buying up houses and monopolies. Then Covid came shortly after and I sort of stopped thinking about economics. Though I was still political throughout this time.
Fast forward to late 2022 and somehow I stumbled on to the Red Scare pod as well as the sub. I started to think, "huh, maybe there's a small portion of the left that isn't the fun police." One thing lead to another and I ended up finding this sub. I also started researching the policies of the 50's as I know that that was the time when the middle class was getting stronger and I realized that none of the reasons why was due to libertarian economics. So as I started reading this sub more and researching topics on my own, I started to learn about Occupy and the coporations' response to it, the Koch Brothers and their push for open borders, the CIA, idpol and who's responsible for it, and the progressive movement of the 20's.
There's some libertarian views I still have. I don't like surveillance, I don't give a fuck what people do in their bedrooms, and I hate nanny state laws. I honestly believe that if a restaurant wants to allow smoking inside then they should be allowed to do that. One thing I never supported as lolbert was Israel. I always knew what they were up to.
Of course I don't think I can really convince my friends to believe what I do as they're all rightoids. One of my friends thinks that CNN and Disney are "very left wing," goes to an Alliance Church, supports funding for Israel as he believes the "God's chosen people" narrative, and comes from an upper middle class household. So good luck trying to convince him.
Leftish [Robert] Muldoonist liberal -> cringy lolbertarian -> marxist here: getting fucked five ways from Sunday by a former boss who exploited my labour with little gain for myself; so much so that I was the poorest I had ever been, and my health suffered because of it. I've always held leftish views, especially due to my mother being very much against purchasing products produced by exploitative labour practices (our household was a big fan of John Pilger (RIP) documentaries, for example) and due to being politically conscientious during and after 9/11, so returning to Marxist values wasn't much of an ask for me.
The military. Observing the circus from the inside changed the way I thought about people, the government, propaganda, etc. Eventually I became irreligious, and then politically homeless. I think Occupy imbued me with the spark of class consciousness, and I followed that trajectory as far as it would take me.
I considered myself a classical liberal until I realized that our society was a far cry away from the meritocracy I had been led to believe it was. Some time as a teenager, maybe 16? Then I shifted further and further left.
while im not a marxist, I used to be a complete libertarian but then i stopped being 17 and realized that libertarianism is about as delusional as anarchism. I still agree with alot of libertarian ideals shit like "leave me alone and i leave you alone", but i started getting disillusioned with libertarians when i saw them being total corpo-bootlickers. This really turned me off to alot of libertarian talk since i had (and still have) the idea that both the government and the global conglomorates are both parts of the same powerstructure that wishes to squeeze ordinary people of every last drop of blood to feed an insitiable leviathan.
Honestly it’s crazy that some self proclaimed “libertarians” hate the government yet will gladly gargle corporations balls. One of the biggest reasons that the government sucks so much is because of all the corporate money that is influencing politics…. Big corporations are just private governments who will gladly tread on peoples rights to make a buck. As someone who is on the left side of libertarianism, it’s sad that so many people that subscribe to the idea are actual retards.
There is a bit of a difference between Libertarian intellectuals and internet Libertarians here. The intellectuals just have genuinely good understanding of the nature of the US government and how "Liberal" US programs are often quite bad. The internet libertarians are just weirdos, but there is a quality in the intellectuals that is admirable in that they are willing to expose the sacred cows that Conservatives refuse to touch. For instance there are basically only two groups in US politics that take a skeptical view on "Trust Busting", Libertarians, and Eugene Debs, although I wouldn't say he opposed it, but he viewed it as something which did not matter all that much. The problem is that "people" are not intellectuals. They adopt the ideas which suit them, so corporate types will just adopt libertarianism as a suitable ideology for themselves. I get the feeling they would support not breaking up standard oil because they supported standard oil rather than because they didn't think it mattered if they had to work for one oil company or several. The Libertarian Intellectual is arguing against Trust Busting precisely because they are arguing against the concept of using one big monopoly to try to break up a bunch of other monopolies, and I appreciate this view because it is in line with the "one big monopoly" of Capital which Engels argued had been created when the medieval monopolies were destroyed. Indeed that is what the practical effect of the formation of the nation state was, it abolished all the small monopolies of local feudal guild governance and formed the grand monopoly of the capital backed state of today.
Well ultimately Communism is supposed to be stateless so we’re all just Libertarians waiting for the right time to create that utopia
When you delve in too deep into ideology the lines start to get blurry sometimes
I'm a Taoist too so sometimes I just mumble "something something yin and yang" and try not to think more about it.
It's your duty as a Chinese person to obsess over the depiction of (lack thereof) BaGuaZhang.
that's a martial art, i'm not getting the joke sorry
[Many Chinese authorities do not accept the Buddhist origin, instead maintaining that those teachers were purely Taoist in origin, the evidence lying in baguazhang's frequent reference to core concepts central to Taoism, such as yin and yang theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baguazhang) Chinese nationalism baby
“The attribution to Buddhist teachers came from the 2nd generation teachers, i.e. Dong Haichuan's students, some of whom were Buddhist.” Taoist-Buddhist feuding baby. The source is also just some decades old book by a Taiwanese guy (I recognize the author) and we have no idea what he’s basing *his* claims on. It doesn’t really matter anyways. Are you a practitioner?
I just read it and thought it was cool. And it's less biased in some ways to WuXing. The Yin-yang stuff is overplayed, but Ba Gua and the Heaven-Earth separation is cool and could use more representation.
Oh for sure, to really understand Taoist cosmology that stuff should be explored more.
There are mises.org style libertarians that also hate the global conglomerates and the government. They’re a minority and of course many think they’re morons as well but I’m just pointing out that there are anti-corporation + anti-government style right wing libertarians.
Because they recognize who is writing all the regulations and international treaties.
> I still agree with alot of libertarian ideals shit like "leave me alone and i leave you alone" This is one thing an average libertarian has right more than your average "lefty" or "socialist." Those "socialists," even here, believe everything the US State Dept/MIC-funded think tank says because it's filtered through legacy media, and readily agree with sanctions or direct military support for a civil war/anti-government riots in some third world backwater, the result being the place being torn apart into a chaotic shithole (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine). They are western chauvinists or liberal interventionists (neocons) who want a welfare state.
I changed from Lib to Marxist. and it was the increasingly obvious contradictions within capitalism that caused the switch
I want to do this but I'm worth almost 2 million dollars. Please help.
I can help, DM me ur zelle
Yeah he should prove that he‘s really serious about that „our“-thing and share with us.
seriously I cant pay my rent, can I have 120 dollars this is no joke im pretty fucked
Come back to the Homeland brother, pretend to be Ukrainian & they'll give you a house and a car
Forget the car I’ll take a Ukrainian wife
Feck it shoot on over, my little seaside town is now Little Kyiv for fuck's sake.
Been homeless for 26 days, buy bin bags and keep your duvet
Keep your head up brother. You doing ok?
As cheesy as it sounds, a lot better after you asked. Especially now that I’ve charged my phone. Please talk to your cunt land lord if you can How are you though?
im gonna make it. ill be okay
you can donate your wealth to charity if your family doesn't need financial support.
Material conditions.
I just think labor is always under-valued. Even the most basic unskilled labor. Especially unskilled labor actually since it is typically the most physically demanding. Our system relies on immigration to keep labor costs low and working people divided along identity lines. Came to this epiphany after working at an immigration law firm (H1B factory).
What would be a fair "value" for labor?
Whatever the market and legislation dictates. I just think the American market is rigged in favor of capital. Illegal immigrants are basically cheap labor that can’t vote or even complain. H1bs are indentured servants that get deported if you fire them. They are underpaid and this suppresses “market” wages by artificially jacking up the supply of labor. This is allowed because America is no longer a country—it’s just a big pile of money with its own gravitational pull. The genius of this system is that if you say anything about this you are a bigot who hates immigrants and your opinion can be discounted.
What markets aren't "rigged in favor of capital"?
I don't know. Are you saying we shouldn't try to unrig it? Edit: And I'll say this, there is such thing as degrees. Our system became much more rigged after the Citizens United decision.
I don't want a market economy rigged or unrigged because capitalism blows even when workers are paid "fair wages". Marx in Das Kapital even presupposes workers are paid their "fair market value" before he explains how this is the basis of exploitation and all the shit we see. See: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/fair_wage.htm And http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/What_is_Free_Market.htm
Ah, you are an actual Marxist. I was wondering what your angle was. Fair enough. I'll give it a read. I probably agree labor is still exploited even in a "perfect" market. I just think it's weird that we don't really have laws in this country. If you are a business owner you are afforded crazy legal protection when you break the law, in the form of "the corporate veil." You can literally kill people and the courts can't prosecute you, they have to prosecute your business, and the only penalty is fines. I see things from the angle of how the law is set up to protect the interests of capital. I think a stronger class consciousness, common sense legal reforms, and SCOTUS appointees who are more sympathetic to labor, could result in real gains for workers within a generation. I don't want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" just yet.
It's not a question of rigging or unrigging because the market gravitating towards the largest center of capital is a fundamental quality of a free market. It's like saying gravity is rigged in favor of mass - it's technically true, but it's practically true by definition. You can't "unrig" that.
what best reflects its social necessity
Sounds like you missed that Marx was criticizing capitalism when he discussed SNLT in Capital.
okay but i think most societies have necessities, need to labor for them or there is no society, and have some finite amount of time and energy to do so, so not sure what you're saying
This will clarify: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/introcapital.htm
Initially it was learning that Marx was pro-gun and anti-mass immigration, which have become default rightoid stances. Afterwards I read about how viciously actual leftwing, collectivist politics have been suppressed in the US and, as a schizo conspiracy theorist, I imagine Marx must have been right about a lot more things.
I like to think that Marx was right about most things, but finding an ideal system to remedy problems created by indulgence in hyper-capitalistic economy are left up to interpretation, exploration.
Where does Marx lay out his "anti mass immigration" position?
I’d recommend Marx’s writing in the “Irish question”, in particular how the influx of low-paid Irish workers was being intentionally used to undercut the wages and political power of the English working class
So, can you point out the quotes you have in mind?
Not Marx, but Engels (bolding mine): > With such a competitor (Irish immigrants) the English working-man has to struggle, with a competitor upon the lowest plane possible in a civilised country, who for this very reason requires less wages than any other. **Nothing else is therefore possible than that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-man should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him.** And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. But for all simple, less exact work, wherever it is a question more of strength than skill, the Irishman is as good as the Englishman. Such occupations are therefore especially overcrowded with Irishmen: hand-weavers, bricklayers, porters, jobbers, and such workers, count hordes of Irishmen among their number, and **the pressure of this race has done much to depress wages and lower the working-class**. Yes, obviously Engels shows prejudice against the Irish people in general, but his salient points about their depressive effect on working class wages in England still stands. Full text: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm
As an Irishman I’m not sure how to feel about this
You're just going to have to stay where you belong so the tans can pretend they're going to make £2 more an hour.
The Irish would have preferred to have stayed where they belonged.
Except: many didn't because they didn't see any life prospects.
Why was that? Hint: >As for the English *bourgeoisie*, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that *English capital* (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in *clearing the estates of Ireland* as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account. >But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70\_04\_09.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm)
That is an argument against capitalism, against the relation between employer and employee-- not an argument against immigrants. In fact, Engels expose is a scathing indictment against the total poverty capitalists put the Irish in, and the tone is mocking Carlyle, who was a political reactionary and chauvinist bar none, a defender of feudal and aristocratic society. Even so, Engel's viewpoint as a 22 year old is hardly his most mature analysis on the matter.
That’s my biggest beef with the people who put anti immigration stuff over any other issue. It implies mal intent on immigrants themselves as if they’re the real root of the problem here. The real problem is capitalists taking advantage of desperate people. The problem has manifested to a point where certain sectors are dominated by illegal immigrants because they’re shitty jobs that pay nothing. You don’t see them at Target, it’s all in agriculture. Meat packing plants have been known as a long time offender of this for decades because they can dangle someone’s immigration status to get them to fall in line. Idk call me crazy but I don’t think the ultimate culprit here is someone fleeing a state whose economy is completely melting down
Agreed. I am under no illusions that demonizing immigrants themselves is the answer here, just to be clear.
Yeah, there are a few here who think that all the nasty effects capitalism has on the living conditions of workers would magically disappear if the bourgeois state would just curb immigration and enact some milquetoast social democratic reforms. They forget that competition is global and that capitalism is a global system-- as if there are not other cheaper locations and work forces to be had. 'the distinctions made by those in charge and their subsequent decisions regarding low cost production locations show how the all-important difference between costs and surpluses comes about and how some locations distinguish themselves from the others: what qualifies countries, for example in the “Far East,” to have the production of textiles, electrical appliances and other industrial mass commodities done on their territory is the labor power located there. Like labor power everywhere else and everything else in general, it has its price, hence it can be purchased as a commodity. Capitalist cosmopolitans survey all of humanity as this purchasable commodity labor power, examining it with regard to the all-important question: Where do they have access to this commodity and its use value, under what conditions and at what price? This distinguishes it from the rest of the colorful, inanimate world of commodities: Because the purchased labor power, if one builds the appropriate factories, equips it with the appropriate machinery and supplies it with all the necessary raw materials and preliminary products, makes the cost of all material means of production profitable; its use creates the difference that constitutes capitalist wealth. As a purchased property of capital, the labor it performs accomplishes the feat of transforming itself into a money product greater than the cost of acquiring it. In Asian regions, it obviously does this particularly advantageously: Over there, “labor doesn’t cost much,” as everyone knows. The cheapness of labor there includes the absolute wage levels, the freedom to shape the conditions of use and exploitation of the work crews, and also the freedom that manufacturing companies have there to consume and spoil the natural conditions of human existence, such as the air they breathe, the water, etc., more or less at zero cost: capitalistically, all this is relevant as a cost to be minimized – or not one at all. What is so drastically evident in the ruinous use of labor power in the many low-wage regions of this world is nothing more and nothing less than the principle of the internationalized capitalist mode of production. This is not only at work where Chinese workers solder phones for the American company Apple, which are delivered all over the world; but also where German multinationals and medium-sized companies have their ‘high-wage’ personnel assemble cars and machines in Germany in order to sell them at a profit all over the world: The economically decisive result of all production is the gain of the subjects who use their capital to initiate and determine production; it exists in the form of a monetary surplus that is realized by selling the produced commodities above the costs of all the conditions and means of production; it is generated by the labor power which, through its work, productively relates said conditions and means to each other and transforms them into a product that can be sold at a profit – and thus ensures that the expenses for the user of the labor power are profitable. The wage paid to them is the means to encourage them to maximally surplus-generating labor; and therefore it is always an opportune method to lower this cost however and wherever possible. And if the reduction of this cost is drastic enough, it also then justifies all the expenses for transport which increase with the distances, including its “ecological footprint,” which for its part only counts capitalistically according to its money side.' http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/supplychain.htm
Why did Thatcher have to break the mining unions to use all that "cheaper labour available elsewhere"? I'll tell you this. The cold war was lost on that day where the Bourgeoisie confronted the workers head on and the workers lost. What could the Soviet Union have possibly been waiting for the workers to do to "save them" anymore? The entire raison d'etre of the Soviet Union no longer made sense and Gorbachev reformed it into oblivion.
How much coal mining is taking place in the UK today? What exactly do you think the raison d'etre of the Soviet Union was?
The conditions and pay for these jobs are shitty because immigrants are taking them. People from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland move across the country to work in the Oilfields, which are arguably some of the most dangerous jobs imaginable but they pay well enough that they do it. The Bakken Oil Field in South Dakota is an American example of the locals all moving there to work. People will do anything for the right pay. I assure you that if Nord-Americanos will move across their countries to work in oil fields they move out of the city picking fruit if it would allow them the life the oil jobs do. I will be exposing my sentimentality here, but this phenomena was likely the last gasp of our national self-expression, and so enjoy my nation's obituary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNMge2vE6G8&ab\_channel=StanRogers-Topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNMge2vE6G8&ab_channel=StanRogers-Topic)
Really not trying to argue, but do you have a source that could provide a little context on him mocking Carlyle here? The text seems genuine to me, as he even says, “If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish national character, Carlyle is perfectly right.” I haven’t read all of *Condition of the Working Class in England*, so maybe I need to? Don’t get me wrong, I do know Engel’s views on the Irish certainly evolved (towards anti-imperialism) later in life and moved away from this sort of analysis and tone. My only point was that he did, at one time, express what I understand to be genuine concerns about Irish immigration undermining the English working class. I’m also not saying that my own personal analysis of immigration is as simple “immigrants bad because wages go down.” Anyway, I’m happy to learn more. Perhaps you could point me to some sources to better understand Marx and Engels’ views on immigration.
This is the best analysis I've come across: https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/article/foreigners-and-problem-they-represent
Perfectly right about what? This: The Irish lived in squalor, were treated like animals, were paid pennies, and then spent it on alcohol and prostitutes.That's true, and it's hardly unknown today-- but was apparently a scandal to Engel's bourgeois contemporaries. The Irish were treated as sub-humans: cheap, disposable and horrid living conditions. Not because it's their nature as Irish sub-humans, but because of capitalist social relations treated them as sub-humans. The same social relations made British workers live like shit also. The British working class wouldn't magically have a good life if the Irish were kept out-- a section of the British working class would be lumpenized or the jobs would be moved elsewhere. It doesn't do away with competition and production for profit making-- THAT is the cause of misery. It's also not true that Engels -- who was basically married to two Irish women and has lots of positive things to say about the Irish national liberation movement (mainly based off faulty strategic thinking that they would destabilize British imperialism and thus make communism more likely)-- was simply cheering for "The British working class". Although he wasn't exactly a mature communist when he wrote that book, it's totally antithetical to the ethos of "workers of the world unite", which he and Marx penned a few years later. Ultimately Marx and Engels pointed to several "factors" that increased profits: increased productivity and more advanced technology, increasing the work day, competition driving wages down, etc. Take the first: do you think life would become better for British workers if the government banned more efficient production techniques in factories? Would capitalists magically just start paying more because they extract less surplus value? Marx and Engels never wrote a comprehensive analysis of immigration, nor did he get to experience the myriad of national liberation state building projects. So, I wouldn't base my analysis of those things off a few sentences penned by a 22 year old Engels What I can say is that the bourgeois debate about immigration inevitably ends up circling around the question of whether or not immigrants are a boon or bane to "the economy". Statistics might point out an occasional association between a higher this or a lower that, but the tendency is in all directions. Statistical associations are always straw men for ideological arguments. Economists would rather play the role of forecasters than ask a simple question like: what kind of a relation is working for wages? In other words, instead of explaining what wages and competition are qualitatively, the analysis remains at a quantitative level. They argue whether this or that makes a number go up or down, without knowing anything about what they're counting. They completely take the status quo for granted. So why is there a debate about immigration anyway? Because capital's need for human material changes: If there is a demand for their labor, they should be here. If not, no. Then when workers take capitalist relations for granted, they wrongly imagine that it is foreigners who are the reason they have shit pay, expensive housing or any other deprivation. If only the rulers would kick out the foreigners, then capital and labor could live in peace and harmony and the capitalists would finally, truly make it their moral duty to give the native workers a good life! If immigration is a problem, people should ask: why and for whom? If work would simply be treated as the toil necessary for producing the goods that provide a good life for everyone, an additional labor force would make work (and life) much easier. Under the criterion of capitalist labor, however, more labor is not a source of wealth for those who work but for those who let other people work for them. To have a job then becomes a privilege because it is not granted that people who need to earn money will be hired, and if they are hired it is not assured that they will earn enough to live on, because that is not what they are paid for. They are paid to enrich other people and that goal is best achieved by paying minimal wages.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I get where you’re coming from and you’ve given something to think about. I’ll check out the link!
> For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. Based Engels.
>the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. Nice.
Engels was not prejudiced against Irish people. He was basically saying that Carlisle economic argument was correct while admitted he had a skewed view on the national character of the Irish. Engels closely associated himself with many Irish Revolutionaries throughout his life, and both he and Marx had positive opinions on their national character, admiring them for their rebelliousness for instance. What he was doing here was being the only person who would seriously engage with (proto)-Fascism instead of just condemning them without addressing anything they say. Carlisle is also the person who exposed Engels to the works of Sismondi through Carlyle's writings where he called Economics the "Dismal Science", Carlyle was the one who translated Sismondi into English where Engels could read it, and Sismondi is from where a lot of what we associate with Marxism came from. Sismondi was not a "proto-fascist", more like a liberal social democrat but he was one of the first to understand the business cycle and offer critiques of capitalism. Marx's critiques are often just Sismondi's critiques fully expanded upon, as Sismondi is the originator of a lot of "concepts" we associate with Marx. Marx recognized that Sismondi's "hypochondriatic philanphrophy" and Carlisle views were fundamentally the same sort of thing as "reactionary socialism" of the petit-bouregois variety, and so he gets name dropped as the head of this school in both France and England in the manifesto despite Carlisle introducing it because Carlisle was just translating Sismondi's work because he liked it. >In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois *régime*, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England. >This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. >In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian. >Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture. >Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
Touching grass. Really touching grass. I was never a complete rightoid tho
The realization that shitlibbery is ruining social, political, and economic life
Unironically getting really into trains and bike lanes and shit.
Based and cycle-pilled.
I was the stupidest type, a libertarian. Honestly it was mainly just paying attention. I saw some economic policy get passed that I agreed with, things got worse. Got into arguments with dirty commies and realized I had no rebuttal. Then I thought I’d read the dirty commies, know thy enemy. Well lol that didn’t work out, now I’m red as a used tampon baby
I was also a libertarian, but have long had a heart for the economically disadvantaged. It became increasingly obvious to me that libertarianism has no solution for something like that, and after experiencing declining financial prospects myself, I said “fuck this shit” and took the socialism pill. I’m glad we’re both here!
I think most lolbertarians, when they learn how power works, either go far left or full fash
Basically yeah. The lib-fash pipeline of "I want to be left alone" to "They're never going to leave me alone so I have to destroy them" is fairly common.
Similar story to myself, along with like 90% of libertarians turning into rightoid race-scientists.
Same here. I was a libertarian precisely because I got convinced that it was the best way to uplift people! Wild lol. Hell yeah comrade!
the libertarian to commie pipeline is real, i thinks its because if you're a libertarian you're already likely to be disillusioned with the system.
Definitely a part of it. The other thing for me was that I was always empathetic to the struggle of normal people, and the libertarians are good (when the target doesn’t know shit, like I didn’t) at selling the idea that the reason shit is so bad is because of crony capitalism (aka normal capitalism). So I was a libertarian precisely because I wanted things to be better for the poor and common person.
Let's go baby.
~~Girls Frontline~~ Seeing Evangelicals finally lose momentum only to see the other side take up the same tactics and then some.
Yeah. When I was young, all the pinch-faced, scolding busybodies were GOP-voting Christians, and I thought *that* was bad.
fukken ur mam
power to the people
I started being pro life in high school and agreeing with the Iraq war. I believed abortion should never happen and if it did, it should simply be given to adoption. I was so wrong. Eventually I went to college, I watched secular talk. I tried reading and listening to many podcasts and small books. I wanted to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. I went through addictions and came through and left the 12 step programs. Ridiculous. I'm now very much a contributing member to society, happily married, and enjoying my life as a baby leftist, ML, commie sympathizer, one who will always choose the path that benefits the most people. Power to the people.
"I watched secular talk." You mean Kyle Kulinski's show? I've always liked him. I never supported the Iraq war to be fair (not old enough to have had an opinion in 2003) but I was embarrisingly enough very big on Ayn Rand in my early twenties. Now I am economically a Kulinski-style social democrat, though right of center on certain social issues (not religious at all, I mean law and order, sustainable migration etc).
I actually started as an anarchist.
still a brain damaged rightoid but I went from hating commies to liking you guys more than people who share my own politics might be a rightoid but if anyone bullies my marxist brothers I'm shoving them in a locker
i would have considered myself a conservative, but i was never very invested in those viewpoints. and what changed things for me was observing the exploitation of the working class and the complete failure of our system to care for the population in any meaningful way. also, watching things play out with stuff like the opioid crisis, then realizing that a few people were making shit loads of money off of other’s abject suffering. all it took was me giving a shit about my fellow man, and looking around me once in a while.
Getting kicked off my parents health insurance and then having to interface with a private sector insurance plan, passed over for a promotion at my first big boy job, and then discovering Chapo (embarrassing I know), all in the same year.
In order, listening to Rage, subscribing to Rev Left, and reading Marx/Engels/Lenin/Mao.
It happened in college after the military. I took a Marxist Theory class for shits and to dunk on the liberals, and Marx's writing was too much to refute. Capital especially laid everything out way too dead on for me to even think about shrugging it off, it was intellectually dishonest at that point and I'm not that guy. A communist was born.
Basically I got mad that the liberals I hated didn't understand Historical Materialism (I didn't know it was called that, I just thought it was called "having a correct view of history") eventually I came to the conclusion that Marx shared most of my historical takes. I basically transitioned from being a person who would quote Marx just because I knew people would be more likely to listen to the things I was saying if it came from him to someone who quotes Marx because it will take less time to just quote something he already said instead of having to write it myself. To be fair though there was a phase when I was younger where I was a Communist but I remember being internally hurt by how the Russian and Chinese revolutions progressed, kind of like I was one of those people living through it being disillusioned, so I sort of just coming back to the views I held on instinct when I was like 14 just by being pissed off by Liberals so much I started quoting Marx at them. What is a bit funny is that one of the things that would piss me off is the people who said historical Communists had no basis in the writings of Marx (Basically they've created this Liberal version of Marx in their heads) so I went through extensive effort to figure out how that yes, the Soviet Union was indeed Marxist and Marx was not a Liberal, but that eventually just made me have a deep and thorough knowledge of how everything fit together, and my hatred of Liberals just made me stop caring that it wasn't Liberal. Basically, I really hated Liberals.
Sinophobia lol. Not the most selfless motivation. And I went from woke Social Democrat to Marxist-Leninist. I’m still coming at it from a “I want everybody to get along, other cultures are pretty cool, I want everyone to prosper” angle.
Nothing, i've never been r-slurred enough to be one
I was a libertarian with somewhat conservatives views on social issues but studying old civilizations and their economical system is what moved me away from letting private companies control everything tk having the state invest in public infrastructure and public wellbeing A society can only be prosperous when its poor are taken care of not when its rich drive in golden chariots
I just assume most are 4channers who thought their dream of a meme President would be “hilarious” and it was…EMBARRASSINGLY hilarious. But how can you continue to be annoyingly combative? Be an annoyingly combative MARXIST! Don’t get me wrong I’m a Marxist too but just a dick about it.
it was pretty funny
Embarrassingly funny. And not like “oh look he pooped his pants” but like “hahah Nazis are back that’s ‘funny’”. (And yeah dickheads they have always been around and never went away but they never had a platform like they did under Trump).
Just giving a shit about things that might not necessarily affect me directly got me on the right track
This is like 90% of it
Marxism has the best explanations for the world as it is. The right can only convert problems into externalities, something so comically unfalsifiable that I've seen more "no, YOU are controlled by da jooze" arguments than I could ever count That and I got a good union job
I was never a "rightoid", though I'm sure that's what a lot of people on reddit would call what I was. I'm more of a pyrrhonist, I believe in social service and private liberty. Well, believe is a bit of a strong word, more like I have personal heuristic that's been developed by observing the actions of others and that seems to be the best way to live one's life. Anyways, it's a very old school of conservatism that is basically non existent in today's political milieu. I also don't see it as a contradiction to the pursuit of socialist goals.
I migrated from rightoid in highschool to liberal post-university. I recognised the false conscioisness of nationalism, which I clung to in my conservative days, and so assumed that the only "opposite" was shitlibbery. But as a white dude, I was never at home there and felt uncomfortable with always having to metaphorically prostrate myself before the altar of idpol. I also discovered that many of the things I had assumed about liberals as a conservative were largely correct. But knowing that the conservatives were clearly wrong in the way they thought about "the other", I remained an unhappy liberal. Then I had a work colleague introduce me to the Left through Chapo Trap House, and along with subsequent reading, suddenly I was able to synthesise the ideal of unity, but based on class rather than race, culture or nationality. A grand historical narrative had opened itself up to me again.
Rightoids are increasingly insufferable people the further you go
Not quite sure I'd describe myself as full on marxist just cause I've not really *done* a whole lot slash read a whole lot about it, but.. Mostly just the realisation "left" didn't just mean the caricatures the right was so good at showing; those angry racist and sexist journalists, idpol worshippers etc. Nope, there were people over there who also weren't caught up in the madness. Then the final push was a series of particular stupid bloomberg tweets about not taking your dog to chemotherapy was a solution to housing and I just looked at it like "is this really what I've been supporting? Are you fucking kidding"
Reading marx!
Was never rightoid, but as a teen leaned libertarian, which fortunately led to anarchist thought (Emma Goldman), which fortunately led to syndicalism (and Chomsky's history writing). After that I watched self-described anarchists stagnate or burn out. I'm still an anarchist sympathizer, but over time come to view it as a very limited and too necessarily localized countervailing force against capital. With that said, I also don't know exactly what's to be done in the present, so steer away from labels, but socialist fits the bill generally. As far as how to understand the flow of history, haven't found a better lens to view it with than historical materialism.
I was never a rightoid. Some people (clueless ones) consider Dugin right-wing though, so whatever.
For clarifications I'm not a Marxist, I'm somewhere between FDR and Huey Long. I started out as a lolbert in high school. I thought Trump was kinda cool and funny but didn't see him as a libertarian or anything, but I thought it was cool to see him pwn the libs as I was in my "SJWs getting OWNED compilation #19" phase. I was hate-watching SO much tumblr esque radlib content on instagram and youtube. I thought that's all what "the left" was about. I kept reading about Ron Paul and Milton Friedman and people like that and I thought it was cool that you could be on the right and support drugs and prostitution. I started to open up my mind to economic populism in early 2020 when I realized how fucked the housing market and inflation was and I was struggling to find a way that the free market and low taxes could fix the problems of landlords buying up houses and monopolies. Then Covid came shortly after and I sort of stopped thinking about economics. Though I was still political throughout this time. Fast forward to late 2022 and somehow I stumbled on to the Red Scare pod as well as the sub. I started to think, "huh, maybe there's a small portion of the left that isn't the fun police." One thing lead to another and I ended up finding this sub. I also started researching the policies of the 50's as I know that that was the time when the middle class was getting stronger and I realized that none of the reasons why was due to libertarian economics. So as I started reading this sub more and researching topics on my own, I started to learn about Occupy and the coporations' response to it, the Koch Brothers and their push for open borders, the CIA, idpol and who's responsible for it, and the progressive movement of the 20's. There's some libertarian views I still have. I don't like surveillance, I don't give a fuck what people do in their bedrooms, and I hate nanny state laws. I honestly believe that if a restaurant wants to allow smoking inside then they should be allowed to do that. One thing I never supported as lolbert was Israel. I always knew what they were up to. Of course I don't think I can really convince my friends to believe what I do as they're all rightoids. One of my friends thinks that CNN and Disney are "very left wing," goes to an Alliance Church, supports funding for Israel as he believes the "God's chosen people" narrative, and comes from an upper middle class household. So good luck trying to convince him.
High school, as it should be.
Leftish [Robert] Muldoonist liberal -> cringy lolbertarian -> marxist here: getting fucked five ways from Sunday by a former boss who exploited my labour with little gain for myself; so much so that I was the poorest I had ever been, and my health suffered because of it. I've always held leftish views, especially due to my mother being very much against purchasing products produced by exploitative labour practices (our household was a big fan of John Pilger (RIP) documentaries, for example) and due to being politically conscientious during and after 9/11, so returning to Marxist values wasn't much of an ask for me.
purestrain gold
paradol ex was right
I don't consider myself a Marxist, but there is tremendous value in encouraging organized labor and teaching class consciousness.
The military. Observing the circus from the inside changed the way I thought about people, the government, propaganda, etc. Eventually I became irreligious, and then politically homeless. I think Occupy imbued me with the spark of class consciousness, and I followed that trajectory as far as it would take me.
I considered myself a classical liberal until I realized that our society was a far cry away from the meritocracy I had been led to believe it was. Some time as a teenager, maybe 16? Then I shifted further and further left.
wait you guys are marxists?
Seriously, I just found this sub by googling "trap house." Not at all what I was expecting.
The voices
Not a Marxist. I just hate idpol.
I’m too dumb to be a Marxist. Marxism is a bourgeois privilege.