[RhetoricThug]

Does Marxist thinking create a Kakistocracy?

The word comes from the Greek words kakistos (κάκιστος; worst) and kratos (κράτος; rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.[4] Despite its Greek roots, the word was first used in English, but has been adapted into other languages. Its Greek equivalent is kakistokratia (κακιστοκρατία), Spanish kakistocracia, French kakistocracie, and Russian kakistokratiya (какистократия).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

Communism is a kakistocracy because the workers of the world aka the profane masses are incapable of governing themselves, and that is why a criminal class of people (kelptocracy) end up becoming the state's ruling party.

For me this became an issue because there is not a chance I’ll use radical, authoritarian language. I’ve studied this psychologically, and I know what it does.

I was also quite profoundly influenced by [Alexsandr] Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago. People say that real Marxism has never been tried – not in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cambodia, in Korea, that wasn’t real Marxism. I find that argument specious, appalling, ignorant, and maybe also malevolent all at the same time. Specious because Solzhenitsyn demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the horrors [of the Soviet system] were a logical consequence of the doctrines embedded within Marxist thinking. I think Dostoyevsky saw what was coming and Nietzsche wrote about it extensively in the 1880s, laying out the propositions that are encapsulated in Marxist doctrine, and warning that millions of people would die in the 20th century because of it.

-Jordan Peterson

[SolarCross]

Quite apart from the apalling communist regimes in history you only have to look at the assorted characters of pofo's own communist cabal to see what excrable* people are drawn to that loonie cult. How could it be anything other than a kakistocracy? "Garbage in, garbage out" as computer programmers say.

---

* spelling fixed

[ingliz]

excreable

Ex´cre`a`ble
a. 1. Capable of being discharged by spitting

[SolarCross]

Ex´cre`a`ble
a. 1. Capable of being discharged by spitting

My apologies for my mispelling, should have been "excrable".

:deserving to be execrated :detestable

execrable crimes

2 :very bad :wretched

execrable hotel food

[The Immortal Goon]

Does Marxist thinking create a Kakistocracy?

Nope.

[RhetoricThug]

Nope.

That's funny, because historically it does create a kakistocracy and then it deteriorates into a kleptocracy.

[The Immortal Goon]

That's funny, because historically it does create a kakistocracy and then it deteriorates into a kleptocracy.

The only example I think you're using is the Soviet Union. It's difficult to prove that the Soviet Union was run by the worst people. And you're characterizing capitalism as a kleptocracy in this example, not communism as any attempts toward it and failed.

[RhetoricThug]

The only example I think you're using is the Soviet Union. It's difficult to prove that the Soviet Union was run by the worst people. And you're characterizing capitalism as a kleptocracy in this example, not communism as any attempts toward it and failed.

So you're unable to produce any historical evidence that can support the usefulness of Marxist thought as a form of government? Pathetic. Capitalism may become a kleptocracy, but at least it doesn't create genocidal social conditions for its constituency. Why do you promote toxic political division and intellectual propaganda? I get it, in America, a capitalist country, your standard of living is so high that it grants you the freedom to invent drama in your life. Next you'll be saying something bout being a citizen or proletariat of the world and 1% of the global population control... Yep, somewhat true, but I doubt posting internet memes and telling people their feelings don't matter will help people get out of real poverty. If anything, you're making Marxist thought look bad by emulating a form of pseudo-psychopathy. I guess the naive college students that pass through a system of closed ignorance find your poles of dogmatic thought to be radical, romantic, and refreshing... So much so, they might spread Marxist propaganda and worship at the alter of logical stupidity. Marxism doesn't end poverty, it brings poverty to all peoples, the rich and poor alike. Live long and prosper, Not in a gulag.

[Thomasmariel]

Socialist mentality is repression, because socialism means equality, which means that socialists can't commit bias. Capitalists on the other hand are fascists, and have no problem committing bias to create hierarchy

[The Immortal Goon]

So you're unable to produce any historical evidence that can support the usefulness of Marxist thought as a form of government? Pathetic.

You gave a specific example and I debunked it. I in no way attempted, one way or another, to support the usefulness of Marxist thought as a form of government.

This is partially because you seem to have failed to understand the role of Marxist thought in general and I didn't think it would be worth my time to have to explain the very basics of dialectics or materialism to you.

Capitalism may become a kleptocracy, but at least it doesn't create genocidal social conditions.

The Native Americans, virtually all African civilizations, and any number of indigenous cultures in Europe and Asia would like to have a word with you...

Why do you promote toxic political division and intellectual propaganda? I get it, in America, a capitalist country, your standard of living is so high that it grants you the freedom to invent drama in your life.

Why do you ask questions if you're only going to try and answer them in insulting ways?

I'm not sure why, but this seems to be one of the more difficult concepts for people to understand about Marxian dialectics and whatnot.

I forget where I ran across it, but there was a piece by Zizek that proposed that one of the most difficult things was to reconcile how capitalism is something that should be both loved and destroyed by the Marxist. Perhaps it's the historian, and being broken to be objective in these things, but I have always found it remarkably easy to understand that capitalism (or any other system) is not good or evil, it simply exists. The issue to understand is how it exists, why it exists, and what the implication of the answers to these questions mean.

Regardless, your line of questioning answers itself. Am I living more materially comfortable than most of my ancestors? Surely, yes. I don't know that anybody would deny this.

On the other hand, you lament what you call "genocidal social conditions." You are correct to blame the former on capitalism, but cannot bring yourself to acknowledge the latter.

The universe does not simply conjure things into existance, these material things I am using and have used to make my life more physically comfortable come from somewhere, and both are the result of capitalism:

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

You mentioned that I, like virtually everyone else in my time and place, is more comfortable than my ancestors on an absolutely level.

Putting aside everything else about capitalism (and there are plenty of other things) we should be happier than anyone else. And yet something like 80% of the world's opiates are consumed by the richest and most powerful society the world has ever seen. There is a crises in health care, in use of Xanax, and any other kind of pill to make one happy.

How can this be?

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.

Even if we build an entire society on the premise that the individual should be happy as a well fed individual with a big house, it does not mean that we do not have relations that are important. These same relations that capitalism puts into question and doubt.

Capitalism is both the best thing that happened to humanity and dialectically the worst thing.

[RhetoricThug]

You gave a specific example and I debunked it. I in no way attempted, one way or another, to support the usefulness of Marxist thought as a form of government.

This is partially because you seem to have failed to understand the role of Marxist thought in general and I didn't think it would be worth my time to have to explain the very basics of dialectics or materialism to you.

Here we go again, the reader simply doesn't understand Marx's perpetual ignorance scheme. I point to two examples, the idea that Marxist thinking is born out of classical mechanics, and the idea that Marxist thought tends to obsess over efficient cause and conveniently ignores the rest of reality.

Here, Dialectical materialism and the trouble of integrating quantum mechanics

Manuscript. ‘Dialectical materialism and modern physics’, by Max Born

In a paper with the title ‘Strife about Complementarity’ (Science Progress, No. 103, July 1953, p. 393) L. Rosenfeld declares the development of modem physics to be a confirmation of the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. I shall try to analyse this assertion. For supplementing Rosenfeld's considerations I have before me a booklet of the Communist Party, J. Stalin, über dialektischen und historischen Materialismus, millions of copies of which are distributed in Eastern Germany as an official statement of the Marxian doctrine.

The dialectic philosophy is often condensed in the words of Hegel, that progress consists in the contest (or combat) of a thesis and an antithesis, which are finally resolved through a synthesis. But already in Hegel's writing there is an ambiguity in regard what kind of progress is meant. Hegel has spoken about the ‘dialectical method’ as a principle of logic, but also about dialectical processes (thesis + antithesis = synthesis, abbreviated (th.—a.—s.), going on in Nature and in History.

The same ambiguity is found in Marx and Engels and also in Stalin's booklet mentioned above. I quote from p. 9 (translated from the German):

‘In contrast to Metaphysics Dialectics starts from the fact that the things and phenomena of nature contain inherent contradictions … Therefore it follows from the dialectical method that the development from lower to higher levels does not proceed in the form of a harmonic unfolding of the phenomena, but in the form of a discovery of contradictions [footnote in the original manuscript: Italics by the present writer.] which are inherent in the things and events, in form of a ‘combat’ of contrasting tendencies which are active on account of these contradictions.’

Here in one and the same paragraph dialectics is used for two quite different things: for the inner contradictions in natural and historical events and for the discovery of such contradictions, which is a mental process of the thinking subject.

[p. 2] I shall now consider three possible meanings and the validity of the (th.—a.—s.) contention namely (1) in the domain of pure logics, (2) as a method of investigating the actual world, and (3) as a principle or law governing the behaviour of the actual world.

(1) Although logic has very much expanded since the times of Aristotle, there is complete agreement amongst the logicians about the general concepts from those early philosophers to the most modern mathematicians. Logics has to do with formulating the laws of combining statements in such a way that the derived new statements are valid provided the primary ones are. Modern research has added one new feature. Ordinary logics assumes that to each statement (or act of statements) A there is only one statement Ā which is the negation of A. That is the law of the ‘Excluded Third’. There is now a group of logicians (Brouwer, Reichenbach etc.) who suggest that there may be a third possibility besides ‘valid’ and ‘non-valid’, namely ‘undecided’. If one wishes to interpret the dialectical (th.—a.—s.) idea in terms of logic, this 3-valued logic can be discarded; for it is obvious that thesis and antithesis must then be identified with two contradicting statements A and Ā, and there is no room for a third position of ‘undecided’.

But this identification is not possible because two statements A and Ā taken together give always an invalid (‘wrong’) statement. In mathematical logics one has A . Ā = 0; this formula means that the domain of objects lying both inside of the validity of A and inside that of A has zero extension. Hence there can never be a synthesis between logically contradicting statements.

As far as physical theories (including the geometrical ones) are logical systems no dialectical synthesis of contradicting theories is conceivable. E.g. a theorem of Euclidean geometry will in general be in straightforward contradiction to the corresponding one of a non-Euclidean geometry, and no synthesis is possible.

(2) We now proceed to the second possibility: Can the dialectical (th.—a.—s.) doctrine be interpreted as referring to the methods [p. 3] of investigating Nature? Then the competition of thesis and antithesis is not a purely logical one, for the laws of logic are concerned with deriving valid conclusions from arbitrary premises, while the natural philosophy has to do with the validity of the premises (which then logically implies the validity of the whole system built upon these premises). Every physical theory is based on experiments; but the number of experimental tests is finite, while the theory is intended to cover all possible, i.e. an infinite number of cases. Hence a theory is always an interpolation and extrapolation from the known to the unknown. As Einstein has repeated again and again: there is no unique way from the facts of observation to the theory.

One can illustrate this by the problem to draw a line in a plane through a finite set of given points. If there are only two points everybody will suggest the straight line going through them as the ‘obvious’ solution; if there are three points on a straight line, a circle will be suggested. The only reason for this choice is the ‘simplicity’ of the solution; what is meant by this word is not quite clear, but in both cases it seems obvious and leads to a unique solution: there is only one straight line through two points, only one circle through three. If there are four or more points there is no such obvious suggestion, and the ambiguity of the problem becomes evident.

The situation in science is very similar. As long as the observations are scarce and crude, the theory appears rather obvious, and it is not realized that it implies additional assumptions. When the experimental material is growing observations are made which do not fit in these obvious solutions, and one has to ponder about modifying the additional assumptions and to replace them by more refined ones.

No theory can be constructed which does not transcend the empirical data by introducing additional assumptions. In physics these can be classified in two groups:

Assumptions which can be still formulated in terms of physical objects although these are not accessible to direct observation. To this class belong many concepts of atomistics and of cosmology. They may be called ‘model assumptions’.

Assumptions which deal with philosophical concepts, like: space and time, continuity, necessity, chance, cause and [p. 4] effect etc. They can rightly be called ‘metaphysical assumptions’.

In the beginning of experimental science these metaphysical conceptions were simply taken over from every day experience and regarded as obvious, just as in our examples the straight line for two points, the circle for three. This was the situation a hundred years ago when Marx and Engels wrote. They were not even aware of the fact that the current ideas about space, time, cause etc. were not the only ones possible. They took them for granted and believed that science was strictly empirical. If they saw a struggle between thesis and antithesis in physics they could only have in mind what I have just called ‘model assumptions’, the thesis being an accepted theory, the antithesis a new one invented to account for newly discovered facts. The question is now whether such competing theories are in general combined through a synthesis. Scanning the history of physics before Marx and Engels I have not found a single instance of such a merging. Consider the main events: In cosmology the transition from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system. In mechanics the replacement of Aristotelian by Galilean mechanics. In both cases the older ideas were completely abandoned, no trace of them remained in the new ones. Later, after modern science was really established by Newton and his contemporaries, the older theories, based now on good though restricted evidence, were often not completely overturned, but remained as limiting cases in the newer theories. This happened when Faraday's ideas of fields were formulated by Maxwell; his field equations contain the former electromagnetic theories (e.g. static Coulomb forces) as limiting cases. It also happened that two different branches of physics were united into a wider theory, for instance optics and electromagnetism through Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light. But this was not a synthesis of two opposed theories of the same set of phenomena, as postulated by the dialectic doctrine, but the combining of two quite different sets of a phenomena which did not overlap and could therefore not struggle as thesis against antithesis.

It is therefore perfectly clear that Marx's and Engels' doctrine is not based on historical facts. It is a metaphysical assumption, and obviously due to wishful thinking. They desired to justify sociological ideas by pretending they are based on scientific [p. 5] methods and share the reliability of these. The elementary paradigma of the sociological situation is this: There is one piece of bread, which Jonathan and Boris want to have. There are three possibilities: (1) Jonathan takes it (thesis), or (2) Boris takes it (antithesis); (3) after some fight they divide it in two parts and each takes half of it (synthesis).

The materialistic doctrine regards the latter as the rule of the condition of progress. I cannot see that this is justified by history; it has happened that Boris got the whole spoil, in other cases Jonathan got it. Nor can I see that it agrees with the communist doctrine that in the struggle between capitalism (thesis) and communism (antithesis) the latter will be victorious and annihilate the former which appears a strange interpretation of synthesis. But all this is not our business here, which concerns only the question whether science conforms to the Hegelian–Marxistic doctrine. This is certainly not the case. Up to the time when it was announced no example can be produced. The only example of the synthesis of contesting theories happened almost a hundred years after Marx and Engels, in Quantum Mechanics. Thus their doctrine might be regarded as a marvellous example of forecast and prophecy. But then it is not science but a feat of super-metaphysical divining short of a miracle.

Quantum mechanics had to acknowledge the fact that radiation phenomena behaved under certain experimental conditions as if they were due to particles, under other conditions as if they were due to waves. It succeeded in reconciling these two apparently contradicting theories by a truly astonishing synthesis. For this purpose a revision of the ideas about physical reality was necessary, and the traditional concept of determinism in physical laws had to be abandoned and replaced by a statistical interpretation of these laws. A critical revision of the empirical base of the fundamental ideas of particles and waves led Bohr to the complete elucidation of the situation, formulated in his principle of complementarity.

The claim that these entirely new ideas are in nuce contained in the doctrine of dialectic materialism means a derogation of the efforts of several generations of physicists and in particular of Bohr's genius. There is, of course, also in modern physics a metaphysical component, since there is no logical way from ex- [p. 6]periment to theory, as explained before. But the metaphysical assumptions (about space and time, cause and chance, matter and field) are a continuous development of previous ones and not wild guesses as those of Hegelian and Marxistic teaching.

(3) We now discuss the possibility of interpreting the materialistic doctrine neither as a logical nor a methodological principle, but as a law governing the behaviour of the actual world. Then the word thesis can only signify some tendency, like force in mechanics, and antithesis then would refer to another such tendency or force opposing the first one. The notion of synthesis would then mean what the physicist calls the resultant of the primary forces. I cannot see any other possible way of interpretation. But then the dialectic formulation is nothing but an anthropomorphic transcription of well known and clear physical concepts. It introduces the idea of struggle, i.e. of a biological concept, into a purely physical relation, and thus it reverts the whole development of physics. The expression force was originally derived from the subjective feeling of exertion, and as long as this feeling was dominating the concept of force the simultaneous action of two different forces might be described as a struggle. Physics has slowly outgrown this primitive standpoint and replaced the anthropomorphic notions by objective definitions. Engels' formulation quoted above ‘that the things and phenomena of Nature contain inherent contradictions’ is a relapse into pre-scientific thinking and terminology of the type of ‘horror vacui’ and other such mediaeval ‘explanations’. As if things and phenomena of Nature could have the sensation which a human mind experiences when exposed to two contradicting statements or influences! This is pure metaphysics of the worst type, and its adherers have no right to attack other metaphysical systems, using this word as an abuse.

The fact is, that no science is possible without some general assumptions which are not logically derivable from scientific methods and in this sense metaphysical. These assumptions are not invariable but have to be adapted to the temporary empirical situation; though they are not logically derivable from facts they are nevertheless reasonable, which means that an unbiased mind knowing all the observed facts will feel compelled to agree to them. If this is metaphysics, it is good metaphysics. But the [p. 7] doctrine of dialectical materialism is bad metaphysics as it introduces associations with antiquated concepts which are not only unnecessary but misleading. Whether the dialectical doctrine has a legitimate field of application in biology and in human affairs shall not be discussed here. Living organisms are struggling and fighting, and it might be possible to interpret the (th.—a.—s.) dogma in a reasonable way. But then it appears to me as a triviality.

But there are other statements about physics to be found in Marxist literature. Stalin, in the booklet mentioned already, quotes a passage from Engels: ‘In physics … every change is a transition from Quantity into Quality … ’. E.g. the temperature of water is, to begin with, irrelevant in respect to its liquid state; but when the temperature of liquid water is either increased or decreased a point is reached where the state of cohesion is changed and the water is transformed into steam or ice respectively. Then there follow some more examples of such changes of state, and a somewhat mysterious sentence from Hegel about ‘Nodal lines’ on which a purely quantitative increase leads to a jump in quality.

The purpose of these considerations is obviously to justify with the help of physics the mentality of the revolutionary, who expects that the continuous accumulation of social injustice (the quantitative increase) leads to a sudden overthrow of the power in being and a new regime (the jump in quality).

The thermodynamical transitions by Engels and Stalin, used as physical analogies for such events, can just as well, even with greater plausibility, be used for the opposite conclusion. For van der Waals theoretical investigations on the transition of liquid → gas, which have been confirmed by numerous experiments, show that by properly directing the changes of temperature and pressure the transition can be performed in a continuous way without a sudden (qualitative) change and without the appearance of a dividing surface (meniscus). The analogy in the social structure of states would be something like the slow introduction of socialism without a violent revolution, as it happened in Great Britain.

But what good are such analogies? They are quite arbitrary and unscientific, in short metaphysical, i.e. transcending the [p. 8] domain of well established knowledge. I am not arguing whether a rotten society can always be reformed in a more or less peaceful manner, or not. My personal view is that this depends entirely on the peoples concerned and the historical situation. It may well be that the Czarist regime in Russia was so rotten and the standard of the Russian people so low that a violent explosion was necessary. But I see no reason why the same must happen in other countries with a higher standard of living and more developed methods of government. I think that predictions about the future can be founded neither on the facts on history nor on theoretical considerations. In any case an attempt to theorise in this field ought to be based on biological observations and psychological study, but not on physics. I emphatically deny that the development of physics can be used as a paradigma for the truth of the Marxistic doctrine.

http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/64/2/155

Causality is tested by experience as precept, not concept.

Mario Bunge explains that, according to Hegel, "cause and effect are but the two poles of the interaction category, which 'realizes the causal relation in its complete development.' Besides, in Hegel's system of objective idealism, the category of interaction enjoyed an ontological status, whereas Kant had treated it, alongside the remaining categories, as a purely epistemological element, and even as prior to experience. . . . Hegel held nature in contempt," Karl Marx and Friederich Engels who were Hegel's pupils, stood on his toes rather than on his shoulders. They turned Hegelian dialectics upside down by postulating the primacy of "matter-in-motion" asymptotically reflected by mental processes. Their ambitious aim was "not merely to understand the world but to change it." They proclaimed human "experience" as the sole arbiter and the ultimate test of any "truth" whatever. But in "testing" their "truths" via dialectical materialism, they ignored the hidden ground underlying all their figures of "experience" - the visual assumptions of Western "sciences" and "humanities" alike.

In his Dialectics of Nature, Engels outlines the Marxian concept of causality: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /index.htm

"This music is worse than it sounds," for it is played literally by eye without ear. Although its epistemology is dialectical, its ontology still rests on abstract Greek Nature. Marx and Engels saw conflicts of old figures as creating grounds for each other while they remained oblivious of the new information surround that had transformed their assumptions. They were attempting to match the concepts of an earlier age to the experience newly visible in the "rear-view mirror" of the 19th century. They were unaware that precepts of existence always lie behind concepts of Nature. Their hidden hang-up was the visual bias of all "objectivity," whether "materialist" or "idealist." They also ignored the acoustic "message of the birds" - the output of any process, biological or psychic, always differs qualitatively from the input. There are no "through-puts" or connections between processes but only gaps or interfaces for "keeping in touch" with "where the action is." When the "play" between the wheel and the axle ends, so does the wheel. While the "subjectivist" puts on the world as his clothes, the "objectivist" supposes he can stand naked "out of this world." The ideal of the rational philosophers still persists: to achieve an inclusive "science of sciences." But such a science would be a monster of preconceived figures minus grounds. No "objective" dialectics of Nature or of science as visually ex-plainable can stand up to the resonant interface with the existential. For "testing the truth" is not merely matching by congruence or classification; it is making sense out of the totality of experience- a process of pattern recognition that requires not only concepts but active perception by all the senses. Today, as "hardware" is transmuted into pure information by the process of "etherialization," the "inner" and the "outer" merge- thinking becomes doing.

-Marshall McLuhan, Media and Formal Cause

Dialectical Materialism as an intellectual convention abstracts a form circulatory reasoning in order to support its own interpretation of Nature.

The Native Americans, virtually all African civilizations, and any number of indigenous cultures in Europe and Asia would like to have a word with you...

I could use your strategy and say capitalism didn't do it, but a fact is a fact. In-fact, all empires, capitalist or communist, commit genocide in some fashion. For it is a struggle of existential happening and a miscommunication problem that divides people into social, physical (borders, walls, etc), and spiritual subdivisions. That doesn't mean dialectical materialism is beyond tribal tenacity, it is equally regressive; it pits fictional characterizations (bourgeois vs proletariat) against one another, creating a dialectic of perpetual conflict, reconciling its own limited and fixed interpretation of 'being.' As a social theory, at least capitalism is biologically appropriate, it rewards ecological niches inside a system of production and consumption via the economic loop of commerce. Communism erects unnatural parameters round human populations and forces its people to impoverish themselves in the name of egalitarian progression. AS long as your ideology/cosmology uses a binary conflict to justify its existence, you'll be propping up an enemy of mankind for the rest of human civilization. This is foolish, because the enemy is never outside of yourself, the enemy is internal and until you conquer yourself, there is no hope for the externalization of human civilization. In other-words, I'm not an intellectual conviction, I'm consciousness having a human experience, and once we recognize the universality of consciousness as the medium for every-thing-in-itself, we can abolish tribal and binary egregores.

Why do you ask questions if you're only going to try and answer them in insulting ways?

I'm not sure why, but this seems to be one of the more difficult concepts for people to understand about Marxian dialectics and whatnot.

I forget where I ran across it, but there was a piece by Zizek that proposed that one of the most difficult things was to reconcile how capitalism is something that should be both loved and destroyed by the Marxist. Perhaps it's the historian, and being broken to be objective in these things, but I have always found it remarkably easy to understand that capitalism (or any other system) is not good or evil, it simply exists. The issue to understand is how it exists, why it exists, and what the implication of the answers to these questions mean.

Regardless, your line of questioning answers itself. Am I living more materially comfortable than most of my ancestors? Surely, yes. I don't know that anybody would deny this.

On the other hand, you lament what you call "genocidal social conditions." You are correct to blame the former on capitalism, but cannot bring yourself to acknowledge the latter.

The universe does not simply conjure things into existance, these material things I am using and have used to make my life more physically comfortable come from somewhere, and both are the result of capitalism:



You mentioned that I, like virtually everyone else in my time and place, is more comfortable than my ancestors on an absolutely level.

Putting aside everything else about capitalism (and there are plenty of other things) we should be happier than anyone else. And yet something like 80% of the world's opiates are consumed by the richest and most powerful society the world has ever seen. There is a crises in health care, in use of Xanax, and any other kind of pill to make one happy.

How can this be?



Even if we build an entire society on the premise that the individual should be happy as a well fed individual with a big house, it does not mean that we do not have relations that are important. These same relations that capitalism puts into question and doubt.

Capitalism is both the best thing that happened to humanity and dialectically the worst thing.

Of course, any dialectic is a spectrum of epistemological values.

We must heal our intellectual schism, because the 'left' and 'right' stem from one mind/body. Fear is the absence of love and the mind is the root of all 'evil.'

Once you create a cognitive dialectic, one must devalue something in order to create value. This is linear, printed-on-paper logic, it thinks therefore believes in its string of characterizations (paradigm of conceit), and (re)issues a sense of pertinent urgency for those involved in the 'manifesto' or 'doctrine' of intellectual convention. As long as people use platonic 'cave vision' and cling to tribal dogma, we'll continue to divide and separate humanity into comic-book caricatures. Realistically, we're one people, we all live in the same house, we're consciousness having a human experience, and civilization will collapse if we allow ourselves to indulge in what I call, a dialectic of the dice: role-players and (r)evolutionaries. History as time-lapse phenomenology, captures tribal images of arrogant peoples attempting to imprint their pattern of reality/perception onto other peoples. In the end, our photo-motion moments (pose for selfish-ies) illustrate death & destruction; collectively going nowhere, chasing our tales, entangled inside a planetary unfolding. Stop playing political dungeons & dragons and love your neighbor as yourself, we're one mind confronting the human condition as it interfaces inside a multi-dimensional happening.

[ingliz]

love your neighbor as yourself

Liberal apologetics, RT? The logic of belief is not the same as the logic by which people come to believe. It never relies on, or employs, a natural theology.

[RhetoricThug]

Liberal apologetics, RT? The logic of belief is not the same as the logic by which people come to believe. It never relies on, or employs, a natural theology.

Love is bio-chemical, not theological. Once you see yourself in the other-end of intelligence, you can rely on and employ a universal love. Love is a universal language, so is hate. The logic of love is the same as the logic by which people come to hate. Should we apologize for happening or being present?

[Sivad]

Which political\economic ideology doesn't create a kakistocracy?

[RhetoricThug]

Which political\economic ideology doesn't create a kakistocracy?

Good point, the worship of a single idea or group of ideas will produce a cult of conceited knowledge (cirrhosis of thought). Progress and evolution stop inside the mind of an arbiter. Conclusions are illusions, mental guidelines for the interpretation of one never-ending process. Conclusions = The inherit vice of society.

[ingliz]

the enemy is never outside of yourself, the enemy is internal

Panglossian shite!

Realpolitik:

‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’

[RhetoricThug]

Panglossian shite!

Realpolitik:

‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’

Funny, you're still using words that originated internally, in the mind. As within so without. The world you see is an externalization of our concept of SELF. This is why violence is a search for identity. Violence begets violence because we co-create (y)our code of conduct. All things in the universe, the unvanquishable number, come from the metaphysical monad. We are many- they are us. Stop dividing humanity, Ingliz. The universe will continue to expand. Embrace the paradox beyond one & zero.

[ingliz]

violence is a search for identity.

No, violence is a means to an end.

We are many- they are us

[The Immortal Goon]

Here we go again, the reader simply doesn't understand Marx's perpetual ignorance scheme. I point to two examples, the idea that Marxist thinking is born out of classical mechanics, and the idea that Marxist thought tends to obsess over efficient cause and conveniently ignores the rest of reality.

Here, Dialectical materialism and the trouble of integrating quantum mechanics

I didn’t say you didn’t understand it, exactly, just that I didn’t try to explain it in the first place. There’s nothing for you to not understand as I didn’t even try.

Ignoring everything mentioned thus far (strike one) and rushing to point out that Stalin’s view of science (which nobody, not even Stalinists, maintain as he wasn’t a scientist) isn’t compatible with modern thermodynamics (strike two) isn’t very helpful. Since you don’t even bother to try and integrate your copying and pasting into any kind of narrative that demonstrates you understand it or the argument (strike three and four), I’m not really sorry I didn’t trust you enough to bother explaining the basics.

But of the things I did bring up, is there anything you’d like to discuss?

[RhetoricThug]

But of the things I did bring up, is there anything you’d like to discuss?

I'm telling you that dialectical materialism is fundamentally an incorrect interpretation of Nature. Why would I want to discuss the details of an obsolete theory? You'll continue to copy & paste Marx/Engels, and I shall continue to call it a dogmatic conclusion. What's the point. Lastly, I'm an apolitical contributor, so I'm not interested in arguing over the historiography of sociopolitical phenomena. I'm interested in the underlying process, not the surface symptoms or side-effects.

No, violence is a means to an end.

Sure, and the 'end' is a self-referential conclusion. Humans invent purpose, humans invent 'ends.' Identity is a side-effect of being enveloped in a morphological field of vibratory resonance. When you laugh at me, you laugh at a piece of yourself.