[Wolfman]

I don't know. Why are you singing the praises of the asshole who created it?

[Kman]

So, you're fine with him being the creator of Social Darwinism, which he used to justify racism, sexism, classism, and was adopted by people who used it as an excuse to oppress and kill racial and ethnic minorities, the developmentally and physically disabled and was a massive influence to some asshole name 'Hitler', but hate him because he was a Utilitarian? Jesus Christ, you people are petty.

This is a blatant lie, Herbert Spencer while being a believer in human evolution never used this belief of his to justify mistreatment of natives in the areas colonized by the british government at the time, in fact Herbert Spencer was one of the biggest anti-imperialists in Britist society and he constantly spoke out against the way the British government was dominating and mistreating these people.

The fact that Hitler adopted some parts of the theories of human evolution and twisted them into non-sensical gibberish that had virtually no truth in it does not make Herbert Spencer responsible for the idiotic choices and opinions of Hitler.

[Wolfman]

Being anti-imperialist does not mean you are not a racist. I'm sure you're not an imperialist, despite being a racist, for example. And there is really nothing that Social Darwinism can be used for other then justifying racism, sexism, classism and ableism.

[Soixante-Retard]

So, you're fine with him being the creator of Social Darwinism, which he used to justify racism, sexism, classism, and was adopted by people who used it as an excuse to oppress and kill racial and ethnic minorities, the developmentally and physically disabled and was a massive influence to some asshole name 'Hitler'

Being anti-imperialist does not mean you are not a racist. I'm sure you're not an imperialist, despite being a racist, for example. And there is really nothing that Social Darwinism can be used for other then justifying racism, sexism, classism and ableism.

FYI, Wolfman, Spencer was no "social Darwinist". The accusation of Spencer (1820-1903) being a "social Darwinist" is from Richard Hofstadter's 1994 book Social Darwinism in American Thought. Neither was Spencer a racist, sexist or eugenicist.

To quote from a reason.com article on Herbert Spencer.

At the heart of Hofstadter's case is the following passage from Spencer's famous first book, Social Statics (1851): "If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die."

That certainly sounds rough, but as it turns out, Hofstadter failed to mention the first sentence of Spencer's next paragraph, which reads, "Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated." As philosophy professor Roderick Long has remarked, "The upshot of the entire section, then, is that while the operation of natural selection is beneficial, its mitigation by human benevolence is even more beneficial." This is a far cry from Hofstadter's summary of the text, which has Spencer advocating that the "unfit...should be eliminated."

Similarly, Hofstadter repeatedly points to Spencer's famous phrase, "survival of the fittest," a line that Charles Darwin added to the fifth edition of Origin of Species. But by fit, Spencer meant something very different from brute force. In his view, human society had evolved from a "militant" state, which was characterized by violence and force, to an "industrial" one, characterized by trade and voluntary cooperation. Thus Spencer the "extreme conservative" supported labor unions (so long as they were voluntary) as a way to mitigate and reform the "harsh and cruel conduct" of employers.

In fact, far from being the proto-eugenicist of Hofstadter's account, Spencer was an early feminist, advocating the complete legal and social equality of the sexes (and he did so, it's worth noting, nearly two decades before John Stuart Mill's famous On the Subjection of Women first appeared). He was also an anti-imperialist, attacking European colonialists for their "deeds of blood and rapine" against "subjugated races." To put it another way, Spencer was a thoroughgoing classical liberal, a principled champion of individual rights in all spheres of human life. Eugenics, which was based on racism, coercion, and collectivism, was alien to everything that Spencer believed.

I hope that helps clear the confusion.

[Wolfman]

FYI, Wolfman, Spencer was no "social Darwinist". The accusation of Spencer (1820-1903) being a "social Darwinist" is from Richard Hofstadter's 1994 book Social Darwinism in American Thought. Neither was Spencer a racist, sexist or eugenicist.

All he did is come up with the entire concept of what Social Darwinism is. Also, fuck reason.com.

[Rei Murasame]

I think that where Herbert Spencer got the reputation for allowing people to just die, is that he was a laissez faire advocate at the same time. Which is to say, that if something is happening to you and the market couldn't be bothered to roll up its sleeves spontaneously and co-ordinate something to save you, then you die. And that it would be a supposed transgression if someone were to initiate force (read: make it mandatory) to get others to help such a person.

So, ironically, perhaps Spencer's actual brutality stems not from Darwinism, but rather from his actual lack of racialism.

[Potemkin]

I think you may be reading some level of intelligence and depth in the thoughts of Social Darwinists that just isn't there.

Actually, I am implying that they tend to lack intelligence and depth. Herbert Spencer, however, did not lack either intelligence or depth, and he was in fact a classical liberal rather than what is now understood by the phrase 'social Darwinist'.

[Kman]

Spencer was a social darwinist in the same way I am a social darwinist meaning he rejected the use of aggressive force and hated war and imperialism and government in general actually, he simply wanted the free market to be allowed to operate since letting this process happen tends to create evolutionary pressures that encourage the genetic spreading of the more nobler traits in mankind.

[Wolfman]

Herbert Spencer, however, did not lack either intelligence or depth, and he was in fact a classical liberal rather than what is now understood by the phrase 'social Darwinist'.

I would disagree on him having intelligence and depth, especially with regard to Social Darwinism (since it seems to be based on a horrible understanding of what Evolution is and includes theories of evolution that were pretty much disproven the minute they were articulated), which, whether or not he coined the phrase or used it to refer to himself, the fact remains that he laid the whole of the foundation for the idea. The only thing he didn't do was name it, and that was because he thought he was just elaborating on Darwinian Evolution and combining it with Lamarckian Evolution.

Spencer was a social darwinist in the same way I am a social darwinist meaning he rejected the use of aggressive force and hated war and imperialism and government in general actually, he simply wanted the free market to be allowed to operate since letting this process happen tends to create evolutionary pressures that encourage the genetic spreading of the more nobler traits in mankind.

Right, so he was a racist, a sexist, an ableist, and a classist who didn't want to murder people. Good for him. He's a half step better then Hitler.

[Daktoria]

Actually, I am implying that they tend to lack intelligence and depth. Herbert Spencer, however, did not lack either intelligence or depth, and he was in fact a classical liberal rather than what is now understood by the phrase 'social Darwinist'.

Aye.

It's a shame that Spencer surrendered to social Darwinism so eagerly just to fit in with Victorian courts. His own life was loaded with tribulations:

http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/ ... encer.html

A Victorian biologist and philosopher, Herbert Spencer was born April 27th, 1820, at the height of British industrialism. He was educated at home in mathematics, natural science, history and English, among some other languages. Spencer was sickly in his youth, all eight of his other siblings dying at a young age. His constitution remained weak throughout his life, and he would later suffer from nervous breakdowns which he never recovered from, and he wandered about London never in a complete state of good health. He suffered from chronic insomnia, could only work a few hours a day, and used fairly substantial amounts of opium. He experienced a strange sensation in his head which he called "the mischief", and was known for eccentricities like the wearing of ear-plugs to avoid over-excitement, especially when he could not hold his ground in an argument. He obtained a job as a civil engineer on the railways at sixteen and wrote during his spare time. This vocation of his took up ten years of his life, and imbued him with a healthy optimism for life and society...

...Spencer's last years were characterized by a collapse of his initial optimism, replaced instead by a pessimism regarding the future of mankind. Nevertheless, he devoted much of his efforts in reinforcing his arguments and preventing the mis-interpretation of his monumental theory of non-interference. He was admired by many intellectuals, including American philosopher William James, but was frequently accused of being petty, hypochondriacal, and maudlin. He died in 1903, and is buried at High Gate Cemetery near George Eliot and Karl Marx.

[mikema63]

I don't know. Why are you singing the praises of the asshole who created it?

1 i posted an article not throwing a party in his honor.
2 both a fascist and a communist have pointed out that he wasn't a social Darwinist, so your wrong about him creating it.

All he did is come up with the entire concept of what Social Darwinism is. Also, fuck reason.com.

1 your wrong
2 if you dont want to consider libertarian leaning sites you shouldn't troll the libertarianism sub-forum.

I think that where Herbert Spencer got the reputation for allowing people to just die, is that he was a laissez faire advocate at the same time. Which is to say, that if something is happening to you and the market couldn't be bothered to roll up its sleeves spontaneously and co-ordinate something to save you, then you die. And that it would be a supposed transgression if someone were to initiate force (read: make it mandatory) to get others to help such a person.

i think one of the main differences between us rei is that i have much more faith in the willingness of people to voluntarily help than you do.

So, ironically, perhaps Spencer's actual brutality stems not from Darwinism, but rather from his actual lack of racialism.

racialism? is that similar to racism?

as to the OP anyone actually have any thoughts about the actual subject of organized labor and the article?

[Rei Murasame]

i think one of the main differences between us rei is that i have much more faith in the willingness of people to voluntarily help than you do.

Indeed, and I can't imagine where you get that faith from, given that people are neither willing nor able to pay attention to everything all at once, even if they would like to do something without being co-ordinated.

racialism? is that similar to racism?

Minus the hierarchical organisation, yes.

[Decky]

racialism? is that similar to racism?

It's what the racists are calling themselves these days. Presumably they have got tired of the stigma that exists against their bigoted views.

[Rei Murasame]

No, racialism is basically racialised politics (which must logically be collectivist) that do not involve ranking one group as inherently better than another.

It's not an attempt to get away from the word 'racist', since that word still exists, just 'racism' describes the ability and willingness to impose the [usually derogatory] views of one particular group about the supposedly-immutable traits of another group as normative and then reinforce those views by portraying them as necessary for the survival of the society.

It's possible to have one of those, or both at once in diverse circumstances, or to have the former and have it be aspiring to be the latter, but the difference is important.

So when I selected the word 'racialism', that was on purpose, since it wouldn't have made sense if I had said 'racism'.

[Decky]

No, racialism is basically racialised politics (which must logically be collectivist) that do not involve ranking one group as inherently better than another.

It's not an attempt to get away from the word 'racist', since that word still exists, just 'racism' describes the ability and willingness to impose the [usually derogatory] views of one particular group about the supposedly-immutable traits of another group as normative and then reinforce those views by portraying them as necessary for the survival of the society.

It's possible to have one of those, or both at once in diverse circumstances, or to have the former and have it be aspiring to be the latter, but the difference is important.

So when I selected the word 'racialism', that was on purpose, since it wouldn't have made sense if I had said 'racism'.

If you say so mein führerin, go force some Korean women into brothels at bayonet point or invade Poland or shoot some trade unionists or something.

Racism is racism is racism however you try and paint it.

[Rei Murasame]

You are aware that the term 'racialism' was actually coined by W. E. B. Dubois, right? Or was he also a part of the problem in your view, because he recognised that he was in fact a black man in America?

Have you lot on the left really reached the point where you are just going to deny what is plain as day to everyone? White socialists must have the easiest time ever, since not only do they not have to worry about racial identity ideologically, they are hegemonic in 100% of cases where it would come to be of importance anyway.

Ironically, as an Anglo-Japanese there are some scenarios (see: anytime someone refers to 'international children') where I am less privileged than you are because of that. So I am familiar with both sides of the equation.

[Decky]

You are aware that the term 'racialism' was actually coined by W. E. B. Dubois, right? Or was he also a part of the problem in your view, because he recognised that he was in fact a black man in America?
Image

I'm sure you are using the term exactly as he did and not as a veil for your love of ethnic cleansing. Go march down Cable Street and intimidate some Jews or something.

[Nunt]

Indeed, and I can't imagine where you get that faith from, given that people are neither willing nor able to pay attention to everything all at once,

If it is your view that people are not willing to voluntarly help, why do you place so much faith in government? Government composed out of the same people, but now endowed with the monopoly of force. It seems, if you have a pessimistic view on human nature, the first thing you want to do is abolish government. If people are selfish and unwilling to help out, the last thing you want to do is give them the monopoly of force over other people.

even if they would like to do something without being co-ordinated.

The state is not the only way to coordinate. Plenty of coordination happens between people on a voluntary basis.

[Rei Murasame]

I'm sure you are using the term exactly as he did and not as a veil for your love of ethnic cleansing.

You just don't want to accept that:

• I'm not an idiot.
  
  
• I can use racialist arguments in many ways in many circumstances.

To wit:

There are so many ways that I could address this, but let's go with this one: do you believe that class can be racialised and that race can be class-ised, on a global basis?

If yes, then how do you reconcile that belief with your desire to overlook it in every judgement you make; and if no, how do you explain things like the Vietnam war or the Palestine-Israel conflict and so on?

Even in these very days and hours, culture-gene coevolution is being explored, as is the neural basis of altruistic motivation centred around the idea of in-groups and out-groups. It's almost as if American liberals are trying to be religious in their attempts to deny this stuff. Basically, you can't make everyone into atomised homo economicus and then seriously expect to end up with anything resembling a functional society, because the tide of history and the human brain will not permit it.

When you all fulminate against these divisions, and attempt to pathologise them, I feel almost as though it's a sort of shrouded insult to the history of everyone that isn't a European-American. Population groups developed with access to different natural resources, different food-sources, different pathogens, different climate, and different societies with different social pressures and different social selection, and all of these things and more acted as different selective pressures on these groups. As a result, various groups have divergent challenges that they face and also quite often divergent interests.

To think that some European-Americans, having now ascended the global totem-pole, would conveniently call for an abolition of one of the most useful tools for binding people into collective action and resource-sharing; I think it really must take some gall. The only reason your country can constantly project this morality is because your country is privileged on a global scale, and so it only helps your country's hegemonic strategy if it can convince the rest of us to abandon the national borders and ethno-racial historical narratives that allow us to define our interests as separate from yours and to pursue an independent path.

In other words, it seems that the emergence of American 'anti-racism' in a world of global capitalism in which Wall Street and Washington are structurally dominant, is simply a tool which emerged to maintain that dominance. That the 'anti-racist' narratives and 'free market' dogmas would then be preached at Europeans and Asians is really just par for the course.

I am not wrong about this, am I?

If we are unable to define ourselves, then we would become just shadows. We'd have no way of justifying the need for our groups to seek an autonomous path, because the whole world would be defined as "America". Perhaps even "White North Eastern America", if you really roll all the privileges together.

On the tar sands in Canada:

Well, if it makes you feel any better, if the whole scenario collapsed into civil disorder in Alberta and I were there in the middle of it, I'd have to side with people like Inderjit Kaur (mentioned in the tar sands article). I'd definitely not side with the treasonous Anglo-Saxon architects of that problem, nor their bussed-in Mexican temp-worker lackeys.

To address your question on "a few dollars away", it may sound implausible, but it really is true that class and ethnic tensions flare more when there is a feeling of scarcity, tensions do sharpen when there is a visibly and noticeably diminishing size of the economic pie. They'll apply pressure to each other and (hopefully) to the people in business and government who created the problem in the first place.

On asbestos roofing in India, which came from Canada:

Fuck the capitalist state and fuck those Indian business owners. I am so murderously angry when I read these stories. They are destroying the whole Indian population group all because they can't be bothered to raise some fucking tax to subsidise proper roofing made of normal materials.

I don't want to hear any apologetic bullshit from libertarian posters now. All libertarians should immediately shut to hell up. Their centre-right and centre-left liberal-capitalist counterparts should also join them in shutting up.

On Filipinos and slave labour:

Why do you think it would destroy them? There are a myriad of cases where supporting both feminism and nationalism in poorer countries and showing solidarity with them, actually serves the aims of the Third Position (as well as the duty that we have to 'assist morally and materially those who feel the same', as per the Third Position motto).

Take for instance the Filipino situation in which their women are all in the North Atlantic, when they ought to actually be in their own country.

Fully 10% of the Filipino women are now in the North Atlantic because of global capitalism:

• 70% of Overseas Contract Workers (OCWs) are women.
• They serve as domestic workers in 162 countries.
• Remittances sent home by those women average €5billion a year.
• The government of the Philippines uses the economic power generated from the remittances, to pay the international lenders it owes.
• OCWs supply the Philippines' largest source of foreign exchange.
• Marcos started that nonsense by doing authoritarian capitalism and collaborating with the IMF. Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, and ass-kisser Aquino III only perpetuated and exacerbated it.
• An average of 4 dead OCWs are sent back to the Philippines every day.

Those figures alone cannot even properly illustrate the racial subjugation that those women are enduring daily. Helping the Philippines to become feminist, nationalist, and anti-capitalist, is a step that ought to be taken if we are to stop this nonsense and also curb their migration into our countries.

Helping Filipinos to rise up against their disgusting government and go back home, also helps women of all classes in the North Atlantic too. How? Well, the Filipinos are over here in Europe acting as maids and private child-minders and thus giving the European states more alibis to refuse to develop child-care services at the state level further ("oh," saith the capitalists, "but you have many miserable Filipino maids you could hire, we don't need to fund child care services run by the state!"). By depriving the capitalists of that alibi, it helps women in the North Atlantic to gain the traction necessary to call for universal child care in those states that did not have it, regardless of social class.

On Ulster-Scots in the South of the USA:

CSA Flags: Drained of any constructive meaning they could've had.

The Southern capitalists emerged as a serious power after the 1970s as a reaction to the problems that the American capitalist system was having. Their particular survival strategy at that important conjuncture, involved ensuring that the costs of doing business are kept low, so that they could have comparative advantage against the North and maintain the basis of their power by using gender and racialised politics - their particular type of culture war - as methods for actually supporting policy preferences that of course served their economic interests.

In other words, rather than seeking to modernise the South and help their people overcome the historic oppression and humiliation that the North had visited on them, the Southern elites simply aspired to join Northern financiers at the table of power, through a process that involved brutally crushing their own Southern population under the weight of religious ignorance, narratives of opposition to organised labour, and also in a cynical twist: the parasitic use of racial dogwhistle tactics to support the stripping-down and destruction of the benefits and social services that Southern people actually needed, even while simultaneously relying on the dissemination of individualist nonsensical philosophy as a means to prevent the Southern population from mounting a coherent collective (read: racialist and socialistic) challenge to that oppression.

[...]

They will cynically do this, and some of them will even dare to drape themselves in the starred-and-barred flag of the Southern people who they have betrayed and trampled, while doing it.

On Palestine:

Well yes, but they are doing it under the wrong identity and without any outside support. Almost counter-intuitively, Palestinian males don't have any Arab identity to speak of, they see themselves as Muslim first. Palestinian women seem to be politically asleep since they identify by their family name first.

Without the ability to conceptualise a proper ethno-racial struggle with the theory of such a struggle absolutely permeating civil society, and with no outside support from other Arabs, and with Egypt maintaining its blockade while Israel occupies and leeches the resources in the West Bank and Gaza, and while the Palestinian Authority continues to enact austerity due to falling tax revenues, all that will happen is continual spasms of religiously-motivated resistance followed by further defeats.

It's really a textbook case of what people shouldn't allow to happen to themselves. Well, at least for those of us who are Third Position/Nouvelle Droite people it's a textbook case.

On First Nations:

I support helping the First Nations people of course, but there is no forgetting; that constant reminder of how much they were devastated and why no one should ever let that happen to their people if they can help it.

While it is all well and good to blame the foreigners for attacking you, there is something to be said for harnessing society and directing forces of production toward at least trying to prevent them from being able to attack you.

On the right to difference:

We all raise a thousand different - quite happily different - brightly coloured flags of every ethnic group that is willing to co-operate, to rally each population for its fight against international finance which must surely come. And that is the essence of the Third Position's mentality which I am revealing here now.

On the ultimate loyalty:

Riddle: Drink-vending machines are all fixed within a narrow range of prices, and it is sound business. Why do the manufacturers ally with each other and agree to narrow the price-spread inside the machine?

[...]It costs money to live in these industrialised societies, it costs money to actually remain integrated with the rest of society. Fostering a level of income distribution where people can actually at least participate a little, is a way to prevent social exclusion, and prevent the rise of anti-social behaviour and criminal cliques.[...]

The logic of my resource-sharing - which is really ethno-racial programming - starts from the premise that I generally favour helping a particular people ahead of any other arbitrary group in my policy preferences provided that rb - c > 0, where r is the average level of genetic closeness between my family and the people in question, b is the fitness benefit to those receiving the help, and c is the fitness cost to me or my family.

• Let's suppose that generally r = ~0.125 for me personally (yes, that number is factoring in that I am a halfie, please don't raise this as though I overlooked it when I obviously cannot overlook it) in the UK - a figure which would be much lower in other countries where I am not related to anyone and the genetic distance would be greater.
  
  
• Let's also suppose that c does not become a positive integer, because my status as a middle class person and my potential to absorb taxation-rises without my quality of life being damaged, as well as my social position being contingent on the maintenance of law and order, means that it is actually in my interest to support social programmes.
  
  
• Let's also suppose that b is a positive integer because correctly crafted programmes at least must have some positive effect on the recipient's well-being.

We see that the result is never less than zero for me in the UK, and it is always higher than it is for any other group in the Western hemisphere. So the debate really is about how much greater than zero the result is, which is to say, in this scenario it is 'always worth it to support social services here', just the question is only 'how much worth it', and maybe even a policy argument of 'how could we make it even more worth it through greater efficiency'?

This logic rests atop the fact that some of a person's most distinctive genes are more likely going to be found in people who have a shorter genetic distance between them than those who are further, which has obvious implications when you are a breeding group shaped by geography and the resources you have had access to historically. It is the genes that survive us and are passed on, and defending people who are generally more related to me - or capable of facilitating the security and prosperity of such people - is actually a tactic that has meaning.

[...] In a European or Asian nation, the premise of the existence of the nation is ethno-racial, and that expression that I placed in bold there (rb - c > 0), is the underlying logic of why the country exists.

So if you arrive at a value that is greater than zero and you then turn around despite that and actually oppose the existence of that governance for any reason, then frankly you are anti-social and wrong.

_______________________

If it is your view that people are not willing to voluntarly help, why do you place so much faith in government? Government composed out of the same people, but now endowed with the monopoly of force. It seems, if you have a pessimistic view on human nature, the first thing you want to do is abolish government.

That's exactly what I want to do, I want to completely and utterly abolish the liberal state. And replace it with a folk state.

If people are selfish and unwilling to help out, the last thing you want to do is give them the monopoly of force over other people.

By bringing people together and carrying out a revolution that requires that they get acclimated to working with and accommodating the needs of people with differing social statuses from themselves, it prepares them to use the monopoly of force in a way that suits our interests. After all, it is capitalism that perpetuates capitalism, not any so-called 'natural' greed of humans.

The state is not the only way to coordinate. Plenty of coordination happens between people on a voluntary basis.

Yes, for instance we might voluntarily co-ordinate to overthrow the entire liberal system and then drag everyone else into that change along with us.

[Nunt]

By bringing people together and carrying out a revolution that requires that they get acclimated to working with and accommodating the needs of people with differing social statuses from themselves, it prepares them to use the monopoly of force in a way that suits our interests. After all, it is capitalism that perpetuates capitalism, not any so-called 'natural' greed of humans.

This seems dreamy and idealistic but what bothers me the most is that you are always eager to critisize voluntary behavior, but then you fail to apply those same critisisms on your own revolution.