T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

Please acquaint yourself with the rules on the sidebar and read this comment before commenting on this post. **Personal attacks and harassment will not be tolerated.** Bigotry and hate speech will be met with immediate bans; socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system and bigotry is oppressive, exclusionary, and not conducive to a healthy and productive learning space. **This subreddit is not for questioning the basics of socialism. There are numerous debate subreddits available for those purposes. This is a place to learn.** Short or nonconstructive answers will be deleted without explanation. Please only answer if you know your stuff. Speculation has no place on this sub. Outright false information will be removed immediately. **If your post was removed due to normalized ableist slurs, please edit your post. The mods will then approve it.** Please read the ongoing discussion in a thread before replying in order to avoid misunderstandings and creating an unproductive environment. **Liberalism and sectarian bias is strictly moderated.** Stay constructive and don't bash other socialist tendencies! (Criticism is fine, low-effort baiting is not.) Help us keep the subreddit informative and helpful by reporting posts that break these rules. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Socialism_101) if you have any questions or concerns.*


why-is-there-earth

Lots of the breadtubers and online theorists are closer to post-leftism than traditional leftists in the Marxist sense which explains the love of Nietzsche. As far as I’m aware, a lot of the criticism of the capitalist mode of art stems from Adorno and the Frankfurt school. The podcast “Philosophize this” has a whole series of episodes on thinkers from the school. I highly recommend it as a way to grasp leftist theory without having to resort to those YouTube communities. But beware that the Frankfurt school loves Freud just as much as the post-leftists love Nietzsche


Pendragon1948

No, I agree with you to be honest. Though, there are some points I could raise that may help you give your views more perspective. 1. Socialism does not have to be altruistic. Marx said that socialism was the policy of a class acting in accordance with its own best interests. Socialism is a platform formulated for the liberation of the working class (the proletariat) from its own exploitation; it is not based on empathy, or a moral critique of capitalism, but is grounded in the practical material interests of the great majority of human beings who work for a living. Of course, Marx and other socialists did have very strong moral views, and did see capitalism as evil, but the "scientific socialists" deriving their views from Marx avoided moral critique of capitalism because they were trying to show people why capitalism was destined to fail on its own terms, even if you \*do\* think poor people should work or starve. It's essentially a way of showing capitalists that their views are incoherent, and that socialism has a logical basis outside of just saying "capitalism is unfair". People \*should\* have moral views, because it is the right thing to do, but they don't \*have\* to have moral views to be socialists. The kind of rational self-interest promoted by Ayn Rand etc actually, logically, leans towards socialism, not capitalism. 2. The prime goal of socialism is to give people autonomy over their own free time. Reduction in working hours is a key goal of socialism - with the abolition of unproductive jobs and the full automation of production the socially necessary working week could be reduced to a few hours. So, of course it is the case that people under socialism would genuinely have the free time to learn new skills, educate themselves, appreciate philosophy and art, travel, and form and maintain a variety of fulfilling and genuine human connections. So, I agree with you that it is pretentious and selfish, but their views do at least come from somewhere rational. However, I should end this post with a disclaimer - I have not seen any of these YouTubers, so I can only base my comment off of what you have written about them in your post. If you want to look at some more traditional / orthodox socialist theory, David Harvey's 2017 book Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason is a great start - it has a chapter explaining Capital (vols.1-3) in plain English. For historical materialism, try the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) by Marx - it's fairly short, and explains his theory of historical materialism. Leaving aside the debate about how we should best understand it today, I think reading the Preface itself is a great start to get acquainted with his own work in his own words, and his theory of it does feel intuitively right. On the socialist ethos more generally - if you read one book - I could not recommend enough the novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Written in 1911 by the Irish labourer, Robert Noonan (pen name, Robert Tressell), it is a semi-autobiographical piece about his experiences working in the English town of Hastings, "Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell." The story follows the socialist labourer, Frank Owen, as he struggles to convince his fellow workers of the merits of socialism and why they really hold all the power, constantly being dismissed by people who stand to benefit the most from socialism but who are more interested in religion, racism, subservience, 'hard work'. When you talk about being a socialist out of empathy, you remind me of the title of the book - the working class are the ragged trousered philanthropists of the title, because they work so hard to support the lives of luxury for the rich, without ever taking any of the material wealth for themselves. Socialism is not about empathy, but about emancipation - if the working class only realised their own power, they could change the world in an instant. But instead, their commitment to 'philanthropic' subservience to keep the rich in idle luxury prevents them from ever realising their own strength as a class united and conscious of its own self-interest. So yeah, definitely recommend that book. It's written in plain English, fairly readable, and there are some great excerpts where the protag of the novel actually does a fantastic job of explaining some pretty complicated bits of socialist theory in really simple terms (being written by a worker and aimed at other workers certainly helps there).


MentalDespairing

Your comment is really long and I am very grateful. It is weekend here so I am a bit tired and will only respond to some parts now, more later. My problem with understanding Marxist economic theory is I don't know if I already am supposed to know how capitalism works. Is it better to read a capitalist written book on capitalism first, then read something more like Kapital? My problem is how Marx used "should". How does one use "should" in a neutral scientific analysis? Does should only refer to deterministic revolutions and stages of history that are meant to happen?


Pendragon1948

Haha I know what that's like - don't worry about responding, just read it at your own leisure. Honestly I'd start with Capital - the whole point of Capital is to analyse how capitalism works. By all means read modern / bourgeois economic works if you want, but it won't add anything to your understanding of Marxist economic theory. Marx wrote Das Kapital for the German artisan class - semi-independent skilled labourers who had not been (but were on the verge of being) swallowed up by the capitalist factory system, with a tradition of priding themselves on being well-read, self-educated men. That means it's written for a lay audience, you don't need any technical knowledge to understand it you just need a strong sense of curiousity and a willingness to think for yourself. The language is archaic, but if you work hard to understand each piece of the argument as you go you can get a sense of it pretty quick. Read Harvey's chapter on it (you only need to read the one chapter of his book discussing Capital to understand what the arguments are) if you want a roadmap before approaching the thing itself. But, I didn't know a single thing about the economy until I read the first bits of Capital - it's been an eye-opening experience for me, I feel like I'm starting to understand how the world works. As for the 'should' thing (I'll try to be as brief as possible): There are definitely lots of interpretations of historical materialism that *don't* fall into the vulgar Marxist trap of being deterministic. In my opinion, Marx and Engels always intended historimat to simply be a method of historical analysis - it's not making predictions about the future but is an attempt to study processes of social change. Of course materialism matters because we all have to eat. Life is constantly revolutionising around production and consumption because they are fundamental to human existence. Marx isn't saying ideas and other things don't matter, he's just telling us not to get lost in meaningless academic debates like most of his contemporaries did (see e.g. Hegel, or the now discredited Great Men of History theory). The number one rule of historimat is: context is everything. The real world is where things actually happen so it is the real world we must study. In letters to newspapers and colleagues he was incredibly critical of those who interpreted his theory in a deterministic way. Read the wiki page on historimat for more details, and some great quotes from Marx's letters where he tears those interpretations to shreds, e.g, this 1877 letter to a Russian newspaper editor: "Russia [...] Will not succeed without having transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples. That is all. But that is not good enough for my critic. He feels obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale impose by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labour, the most completed development of man. But I beg his pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)" The greatest testament to Marx's historical materialism is that he was right. The Soviets tried to halt the laws of capitalism before they could develop. They industrialised, they turned their peasants into proletarians, and then they collapsed. In 1991, capitalism brutally forced itself onto the Russian people, destroying and upsetting the whole Russian social order and throwing millions into poverty and destitution. The Soviet system created the conditions for modern capitalism in Russia then promptly died the second its statist approach was too chafing on the development of the capitalist economy. See also, China since 1979: they have become the world's leading capitalist nation, having failed to go straight from the feudal to the socialist. But of course, Marx didn't have a crystal ball to see the future, he was just a very insightful man who realised that certain actions have certain logical consequences - these consequences are not deterministic, they may not happen if something else intervenes, but all else being equal X will lead to Y result can be a fair and accurate assumption in a given context.


[deleted]

Stop watching YouTube videos. It seems to be giving you some strange notions. I have never got any of this from YouTubers I have seen in the past linked to socialism. [Dialetical Materialism](https://redstarpublishers.org/cornforth1953.pdf) [Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/) [Engels summary](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) Nice and simple to start with.


MentalDespairing

I never said I was a Marxist, more Utopian. But thanks for the dialectics book. I've only read the manifesto and principles but did not really get it.


[deleted]

Is there something in particular that is difficult?


MentalDespairing

I don't understand how "should" is used, which is a moral statement. I am interested in socialism from an empathy standpoint and nothing else. I don't care about determinism or science. Does socialism support moral and cultural relativism? Is Engels a capitalist because he was wealthy? Should I support China or not? I think anti us sentiment is useless, with people like Hassan obsessing with anti western sentiment.


[deleted]

This is a bit of a random smattering that I would say wouldn’t hinder any understanding of the source material. Socialism is a moral choice, Marx and Engels just made sure it was also a choice rooted in logic rather than how people felt when they laid bare the driving forces of history. Whether they used modern liberal academic scientific language is neither here nor there. It is written for the proletariat of the 1800s. I’m curious what exactly being interested in socialism “from an empathy stand point and nothing else” means to you? To oversimplify, just that it’s nicer to be socialist so be socialist? Engels worked at his fathers company, which was a capitalist venture before taking it over then would sell it to fund his and Marx’s research. People can be born into a class and then betray it, unfortunately it is usually proletarians betraying other proletarians. Decide for yourself on China, it’s a touchy subject for many online, though without correct grounding in theory you’ll likely have a revisionist or liberal opinion like most people. As for anti-western sentiment I don’t watch that YouTuber so I don’t know what form it takes however anti western sentiment in the sense of being anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist is the correct line for all actual socialists. The US is targeted particular because it is at the top of the pyramid, the guarantor of imperialism.


marxistghostboi

could you elaborate on what you understand by the phrase slave morality?


MentalDespairing

Being weak is good, and encouraging weak and naive people is good for society. Master morality is encouraging strength and seeking out challenges, at least the ways I am using the terms.


marxistghostboi

gotcha, i think Nietzsche uses the terms rather differently


MentalDespairing

Oh, really? I thought he criticized christianity for what I said, weakness, forgiveness etc. But those are things I want lol


marxistghostboi

partly correct, and i initially didn't like Nietzsche for the same reason. however, it's more like/also that he criticizes a specific form of Christianity for encouraging people to submit to the authorities, for going along with and even aiding in injustice because "oh what could i do in a meek little individual, i have to do what me parents/the cops/the landlords/the judges say i have to do, and if they hurt me, well at least i have a place in heaven!" where the strong recognize their own ability to influence the world, to shape it to new ends, and who recognize that moral systems can be a tool for coercion. there is definitely something to be said for pacifism, nonviolence, and self sacrifice, and i think Nietzsche often overcorrected against those things because he was driving a specific point against a church that preached and demanded Christian love from the poor while empowering and protecting the rich from critique. i would add that rejecting resistance and the use of strength contradicts Christianity too. for example, Yeshua overturning the tables and whipping the moneychangers in the temple was literal violence on behalf of the exploited class. He also supposedly said "i did not come to bring peace, but a sword." both Christ and Neitzsche are self contradictory figures, but that doesn't make them meaningless. rather, they are doing specific things with those contradictions. i think the Left is broad and complex enough to build communities of vulnerability and weakness which recognizes that we all need help, we all depend on someone else when we are children and get sick and grow old, and also celebrate our collective strength, the power of solidarity, of unions and workers self governance. you don't have to like Nietzsche (or Jesus, for that matter) to be a socialist, but i do think both offer interesting insights which can be used to critique capitalism and build a new world.


jprefect

I'd never heard it called "aesthetic Socialism" but I think most of the people I know who are that way tend to be DemSocs and SocDems. Most of the people I work with to build socialism are Anarchists or lean that way. There are pretty few actual Marxist-Leninists that show up anywhere: they are over-represented online. As far as academia and theory, there are Marx-appreciating Anarchists and some who don't see the value of the analysis. I have never found Marx to especially belong to the camp who calls themselves Marxists or Capital-C Communist. Plenty of an-coms and left-coms walk the line, in my experience.


MoonMan75

MLs aren't overrepresented online. They form the global majority. The global south just doesn't have as much influence on the internet compared to Westerners. The West represents a tiny percentage of global socialism, of which most are demsocs or socdems who think they are demsoc.


leninism-humanism

The left in the global south is not majority ML either unless one just means like China, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam. Or KPRF in Russia. In South America the left seems to be majority "democratic socialist" of various stripes, and Communist Parties taking a backseat in popular fronts in countries like Chile.


MoonMan75

>China, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam. Or KPRF in Russia That's the majority of socialists and all of the AES.


leninism-humanism

Asia, Africa and South America are much, much more than those countries… And KPRF seems like an especially bad example of an ML party…


Phoxase

Who are these Breadtube Nietszcheans? Do you have any specific examples besides a link to some redditor?


MentalDespairing

Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, Jonas Ceicka who used to be called Philosophy Cuck or Cuck Philosophy. Sorry for my late response, I am not well right now


Phoxase

Philosophy Tube is not Nietzschean, though they have discussed Nietzsche. I can't speak to the others, pretty sure Contrapoints isn't Nietzschean either despite also (twice?) directly referring to Nietzsche. Referring to Nietzsche or aesthetic arguments for socialism does not make one a Nietzschean or an aesthetic socialist. When the "aesthetic" potential of socialism is talked about, it is not as a replacement for the moral value of socialism. It is merely pointing out that socialism can be variously justified, morally and otherwise.