I Reject, I Affirm. ''Raising the Black Flag'' in an Age of Devilry. - Page 13 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15041968
Sivad wrote:Fuck that. Forcing people to contribute to the good of all is anti-social. Socialism is just paying what you owe and getting what you're due. If people want to contribute beyond that then it's up to them but nobody's got any business forcing others to sacrifice to the collective.

Lol, if that is socialism then I am a socialist too.
#15041971
annatar1914 wrote:@Potemkin , @Presvias , and others;

Another thing i've been reflecting on recently is the oft-repeated canard that Socialists necessarily are against hierarchy, are ''levellers'' who demand absolute sameness and total egalitarianism. Not so, with me anyway. I'm for earned hierarchy based on merit, on talent and vocation, not a hierarchy based on some circumstance of heredity or private wealth.

And so let a Physician make more money than a Dog-Catcher, for example! But let both not lack in basic needs, or have superfluity of material goods beyond their station in life, some vast disparity of income. And let all contribute to the good of all.

My thought is that hierarchies in themselves aren't wrong but symptoms that are commonly attributed to them, as much as the means in which hierarchies currently operate is what is contested.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/flourishing.pdf
Turning now to the most characteristic creature which inhabits the terrain of liberal capitalism – the capitalist firm. Although the firm grows in liberal egalitarian soil it is far from liberal or collaborative within its own ranks. A firm is a project whose mission is the expansion of the proportion of social labour (i.e., value) it subsumes and generally operates a regime of uncompromising top-down dictatorship worthy of the most byzantine authoritarian dictatorship. Although norms of collaboration may apply within the Board of Directors or among co-workers on the shop floor, these collaborative relations are subsumed within the ethos of top-down direction.

And there are different ideas of how such a hiearchy should have its representatives legitmized and organized.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/status-orders.htm
People gladly accept representatives that are true to the virtue of the task which people are organized around.
At present, most of modern life is one tightly ruled by bosses whose authority and ability to be subject to input by their employees can be quite restrained.
Even when one allows employees to collaborate actively, they are still often restricted to their tasks and distanced from another level of the company with collaboration among the bosses who run the place.
A simple equalization/flattening doesn't necessarily improve the functioning of every organization, but the sort of decision making model in many companies is an increasing antiquity not essential to the functioning of such organizations as much as they're a stranglehold of power by a ruling class and their ideals that organize people's lives.
And it's not elitist that those most involved in a task have greater say than those not effected nor involved in such tasks.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/habermas-review.htm
It seems to me that the counterfactual element of everyone’s word having equal sway and the force of argument only carrying weight needs to be given some consideration. In real life, the word of people who have greater experience or a proven record in some domain counts for more. Is this inherently elitist? I don’t think so. For example, I have a right to make claims about activities with which I am intimately concerned over the word of others who have no such involvement.

Not everyone's voice is equally weighted in all situations. And some especially get greater weight because people readily defer to them for their expertise, trust in their judgement as proven in their experience/track record, they're trusted.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/atheists.htm
Trust arises from collaboration within a single system of activity with another person. Trust means you know someone’s track record and there’s a reliability about it because your interaction has not just been random, passing interactions, but has taken place within some definite project or institution or movement. Trust extends only as far as the self-consciousness of the relevant subjectivity. So for example, if I've worked with someone at work, I will trust them with work matters, but I won’t necessarily trust them to look after my kids or in personal relationships and so on. And vice versa. In any case, trust is the relationship you have with people that you have collaborated with within a subjectivity.


There is also of course the point that in trying to do away with the law of value, that there will in fact be the inequality by people being paid in accordance with their labor as opposed to the social average, hopefully making labor more directly social.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

Commodities still exchanged as equal, but people are rewarded in equal with the labor they provide rather than the socially averaged labour necessary for the task.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/indirectly-social-labor/
Careful readers may ask how such a society would determine the labor-content of consumption goods (the ‘prices’ at which workers ‘buy’ them with their labor-certificates) in the absence of socially necessary labor time. This calculation would be based on the average social labor-time that it took to make a commodity. The calculation could be done simply by adding up all of the concrete labor times that go into making widgets and dividing this by the number of widgets. Such a calculation would allow society to continue to make production plans and to ‘price’ commodities. But the compensation of laborers would not be done through such a process of averaging. So such a system would not eliminate the role of average labor time as an accounting unit. What it would eliminate is the role of average time in the compensation of workers.12

Earlier we used a similar example of a Wallmart executive finding the average cost of of producing a commodity to set the price of the commodity. This example demonstrated how this process of averaging, which determines the socially necessary labor time, erases all particularity of workers, treating individuals only as units of average labor time, as abstract labor. Here, in our example of a communist society with directly social labor, we also see an example of the ‘prices’ of goods being calculated through a similar calculation of average labor time. What is the difference between these two examples? The difference is that Wallmart pays the same price for all of the commodities it buys from suppliers and those suppliers in turn only pay workers to the extent that they can produce at the social average. Any wasted time is not compensated. This creates an incentive for speed-up, exploitation, and the domination of machines over humans in production. In our communist society workers are compensated for the actual amount of time they labor, not just the part that achieves the average. This means that their labor is directly social. The immediate practical implications of this are that there is not an incentive for speed-up and so machines do not loom over production demanding more and more life from the worker.

But in regards to low skilled labor being compensated less than more expertise, I don't think this is seen as wrong in itself.
But such an inequality would seem to become irrelevant should the principle of each according to their abilities and to their needs actualized, one would in a sense be justly compensated differently.



I think Engel's wrote in criticism of what is essentially the Ricardian socialist view of people being given their due product for their work.
Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology Simon Clarke - P. 75
Far from adopting the labour theory of value to ‘prove’ the exploitation of the working class, Marx’s critique of Ricardo undermines any such proof, both philosophically, in undermining the liberal theory of property which sees labour as the basis of proprietorial rights, and theoretically, in removing the immediate connection between the expenditure of individual labour and the value of the commodity, so that the relationship between ‘effort’ and ‘reward’ can only be constituted socially. Thus Marx was harshly critical of ‘Ricardian socialism’ which proclaimed labour’s entitlement to its product, arguing that such a ‘right’ was only a bourgeois right, expressing bourgeois property relations.4

A Fair Day's Wages for a Fair Day's Work - Engels
A fair day's wages for a fair day's work? But what is a fair day's wages, and what is a fair day's work? How are they determined by the laws under which modern society exists and develops itself? For an answer to this we must not apply to the science of morals or of law and equity, nor to any sentimental feeling of humanity, justice, or even charity. What is morally fair, what is even fair in law, may be far from being socially fair. Social fairness or unfairness is decided by one science alone — the science which deals with the material facts of production and exchange, the science of political economy.

Marx's work is a point that such a 1:1 relationship between producer and product has been destroyed with capitalism which socialized production. Which is why one doesn't deal with a handicraft system but with organizations with masses of people in a division of labour. One person doesn't do all the work to produce a commodity, many people play different and specific roles for the final product.

Socialism isn't compatible with the norms of capitalism in it's essentials.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
The implementation of such a genuine, substantive freedom of course would require “despotic inroads117 on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production,” something Marx already wrote earlier, in The Communist Manifesto (Manifesto of the Communist Party, MECW 6:504). It would neither be a realization of bourgeois freedom nor would it even be commensurate with, or justifiable on the basis of, bourgeois freedom and equality, even as it is bourgeois production which makes this substantive freedom first possible.
#15041974
Potemkin wrote:No, I am not merely restating what you said. After all, a bourgeois would claim that the dividends he or she gets from the capital they have invested in their portfolio are merely their just reward for risking their capital.


Who cares what they claim, the only question is whether they took more than their due. They obviously have and so they need to be made to pay what they owe.


The existence of private property and the investment of capital for profit leads inevitably to a system in which there is a class of people who must work to live and also a parasitic class of property-owners who do not have to work but can live off the labour-power of others.


According to the Marxists but not really. There's nothing inevitable about it, we can easily implement a system that prevents that kind of injustice from occurring which stops well short of total collectivism and preserves rightful property.


The parasitic class of people cannot be condemned by accountancy arguments alone, as you are trying to do.


You're making the same argument, you're saying these people take more than their due and they don't pay what they owe. The only difference is you think we need to abolish private property to square the accounts.

After all, they own their capital and are therefore 'entitled' to their dividends.


No they don't and no they aren't. They control the capital but ownership implies rightful entitlement and that requires just acquisition.


Socialism is not merely a demand for a fair form of accountancy; it is the insistence that all (with the ability) must produce the social wealth in which all (with the need) must share.


No, that's communism. You're conflating two very different systems that are based on two very different principles.


It is both, just as capitalism is both the next stage after feudalism and also a totally different system with a totally different ethos.


There's no natural or rational progression from feudalism to capitalism or from socialism to communism, that's just Marxist dogma.


The wealthy would say that they don't owe a damn thing to anyone. What answer would you give them?


I would tell them they didn't earn the wealth they possess. That it doesn't rightfully belong to them, it belongs to the people that created it so they need to stop taking more than their due and start paying what they owe.
#15041977
IMHO, people work best in a voluntary society, but like I said, everyone else should be free to have their own societies. I'm not sure whether a transitional state-capitalist society would ever escape that embryonic stage of socialism, but could be wrong and willing to give others their fair shot at it.

Everything I've ever observed tells me that trying to forcibly compel people to do thungs, when they either can't or will resist, will lead to a deeply resentful, unhealthy society.

Hopefully @annatar1914 will share his thoughts on this and my last 2 posts, seeing as they're obviously not 'clever enough' for one other. ;)
#15042000
Sivad wrote:Who cares what they claim, the only question is whether they took more than their due. They obviously have and so they need to be made to pay what they owe.

How do you know they took more than their due? You say they 'obviously' have. Why is it obvious? It certainly isn't obvious to them.

According to the Marxists but not really. There's nothing inevitable about it, we can easily implement a system that prevents that kind of injustice from occurring which stops well short of total collectivism and preserves rightful property.

What is 'rightful' property? How does it differ from 'non-rightful' forms of property? :eh:

You're making the same argument, you're saying these people take more than their due and they don't pay what they owe. The only difference is you think we need to abolish private property to square the accounts.

It's not a matter of "squaring the accounts"; this is to use the language and the logic of bourgeois right, based on bourgeois concepts of private property and an accountant's view of what people are 'due'. You should read what Wellsy posted above about what Engels had to say about the concept of "an honest day's pay for an honest day's work".

No they don't and no they aren't. They control the capital but ownership implies rightful entitlement and that requires just acquisition.

Does it? Should white Americans hand back every square inch of land in the USA to the Native Americans because their ancestors stole it from the Native Americans' ancestors? Ownership is clearly not based on "just acquisition" (however that is defined).

There's no natural or rational progression from feudalism to capitalism or from socialism to communism, that's just Marxist dogma.

Then how did feudalism evolve into capitalism over historical time? The leprechauns did it! It must have been the leprechauns.... :excited:

I would tell them they didn't earn the wealth they possess. That it doesn't rightfully belong to them, it belongs to the people that created it so they need to stop taking more than their due and start paying what they owe.

Why? Because you decided that they should? They'll tell you to fuck off. And then what? :eh:
#15042029
Potemkin wrote:How do you know they took more than their due? You say they 'obviously' have. Why is it obvious? It certainly isn't obvious to them.


Obviously no single person is worth a billion dollars, they could never earn or create that much wealth on their own so it's clearly the product of other people's labor. They may try to deny that they made their money off the backs of others but that's the plain simple truth. The reality isn't obscured just because some people are crazy fucking liars.


What is 'rightful' property? How does it differ from 'non-rightful' forms of property? :eh:


Nozick did a pretty good job on the broad strokes: justice in acquisition, justice in transfer, justice in holding.

It's pointless to get into a big debate here about what justice entails. I will say that there are objective facts about what is and isn't just and those facts are rationally discernable but ultimately it's gonna be settled through politics or Clausewitz.


It's not a matter of "squaring the accounts"; this is to use the language and the logic of bourgeois right, based on bourgeois concepts of private property and an accountant's view of what people are 'due'. You should read what Wellsy posted above about what Engels had to say about the concept of "an honest day's pay for an honest day's work".


Yeah well according to the Marxists anything short of a termitary is bourgeois. I don't share that perspective.


Does it? Should white Americans hand back every square inch of land in the USA to the Native Americans because their ancestors stole it from the Native Americans' ancestors? Ownership is clearly not based on "just acquisition" (however that is defined).


I don't think land can be rightfully owned by anyone. I'm with the geo-libertarians on that one.


Then how did feudalism evolve into capitalism over historical time? The leprechauns did it! It must have been the leprechauns.... :excited:


Some very clever and powerful people cooked it up and imposed it on the world. It could have went a lot of different ways, I'm not any kind of strict determinist.


Why? Because you decided that they should? They'll tell you to fuck off. And then what? :eh:


Then politics. And if they refuse to abide by politics then we go to Clausewitz.
#15042031
Sivad wrote:Obviously no single person is worth a billion dollars, they could never earn or create that much wealth on their own so it's clearly the product of other people's labor. They may try to deny that they made their money off the backs of others but that's the plain simple truth. The reality isn't obscured just because some people are crazy fucking liars.

If someone can make a thousand dollars from share dividends, then why shouldn't they be allowed to make a billion dollars from share dividends? Why is the first amount okay, but the second isn't? :eh:

Nozick did a pretty good job on the broad strokes: justice in acquisition, justice in transfer, justice in holding.

It's pointless to get into a big debate here about what justice entails. I will say that there are objective facts about what is and isn't just and those facts are rationally discernable but ultimately it's gonna be settled through politics or Clausewitz.

Why is it pointless? Rather, disputes about the nature of 'justice' are the crux of the matter here. The non-working parasite class will have different ideas about what is 'just' than the working class. And, by their own standards, both sides will be 'objectively' correct.

I don't think land can be rightfully owned by anyone. I'm with the geo-libertarians on that one.

'Rightfully' by whose standards? :eh:

Some very clever and powerful people cooked it up and imposed it on the world. It could have went a lot of different ways, I'm not any kind of strict determinist.

Ah, so it was the Illuminati rather than the leprechauns? Good to know. Lol.

Then politics. And if they refuse to abide by politics then we go to Clausewitz.

I always knew you were a revolutionary at heart. ;)
#15043238
Good conversation. I was personally enriched by it, although (perhaps due to my own mood) I could not help but think as I read the same feeling I used to get walking past the local graveyard at night as a boy...

One marches onward doing what one must, drawn by that which we are led willingly, towards the ends for which we were made.

And unfortunately, my friends who have recently contributed to this thread of mine, people have to often be compelled against their will towards and end for which they are directly benefited by in this life, else there would be no civilization or developmental progress of any kind in human society.

In this talk of ours recently, where is God in all of it? Well, in the last two sentences of mine, lay the answer to that question. Next couple posts of mine will cover issues of inevitability, predestination and fate, grace and salvation/damnation and reprobation, determinism and free will. Compulsion.

Obviously, the shadow thrown by these matters is what politics truly is, in this earthly life.
#15043580
As promised, I said I would begin a discussion (if only a reflection within my own soul) on some pretty weighty matters. Tonight, I am going to discuss ''Compatibilism'' (a modified Determinism), which should be fairly easy since I am a Compatibilist. What do I mean?

People's wills are free, but they will only what they desire, and they do so being moved by their passion's attraction to various sensuous (as in; ''of the senses'') created things. People naturally choose what they want, truly want, but what they want is not an ultimately uncaused choice.

At no point does an actual ''freedom'' or ''Liberty'' in the Libertarian sense exist, because a random and arbitrary ''choice'' without a cause would be no real volitional and moral choice at all and would remove these questions outside the realm of morality altogether.


(So how can ''Libertarianism'' exist in a political sense?) Because nobody who truly wills, believes that they are the slave to what they will, the object of their passions and strivings. So some imagine they are free indeed when they are not.

But people without God's life within them, they move willingly only towards the objects of their disordered passions, and so sin and responsibility lie only with them and not He Who made them.
Man chooses to take actions, therefore Man is responsible. Not what causes Man to choose, for these things are all good insofar as they are from God and are only willed to be used in a bad way and for bad objects in mind.

So what we have is in human society, a clash of wills, each will striving to fulfill the satiation of one's desires at the expense of others if it comes to it. But some are more social than others, or at least more clever, and understand that nobody gets anything in a war of all against all, so each must limit their desires so that everybody gets something rather than nothing. This is accomplished, my friends, by force and force alone.

And this is where the State comes in.
#15044381
A species of compulsion, the Death Penalty...

I was motivated by the thread on Capital Punishment to try to square my belief in National Bolshevism with the death penalty, and my stated views on why this is so important. I wrote;

Societies are built not so much as mutual trust, but mutual fear, and when fear is removed, society collapses towards anarchy sooner or later depending on the degree of State fecklessness and impotence.


How then can I posit a belief in a true Republic, Socialist and seeking the common good of all, with a belief such as I expressed above, a statement not seemingly humanist, but reactionary?

The ''Common Good'' is what is sought after, even if society is built on mutual fear holding people together, and even if people only band together because they know it's better to get something than to seek everything and lose it all. Criminal/Selfish/Traitorous elements have to be removed and purged from society to some degree, if society is to experience a degree of peace that will encourage genuine progress and personal development as a goal for all. We all know that not everyone will willingly work towards the common good of all, so if they are to remain in society at all to any degree and benefit from others hard work and sacrifices, some degree of compulsion and force are necessary to keep them useful.

And these are universal truths, too, applicable to any society above that of Homer's Cyclops, living in caves.
#15047494
Interesting observation I've made for those like myself who are PoFo friends and fans of @Victoribus Spolia is that while he is an Anarcho-Capitalist (he actually is much more than that) and I am a Statist and a Socialist of sorts (but much more than that), the practical effect of such beliefs leads me to much the same conclusions as he does as time goes on.

What do I mean? Well, given my views on human nature and determinism, the State as it exists of fallen human beings is only provisional, can only hold back the lawlessness and anarchic tendencies of mankind to a degree, and eventually it fails every time. It cannot build Heaven on Earth, the State can't, and over time can't even keep maintaining it's grip on it's own patch of Earth, either.

So it's an endless cycle, and probably over time increasing the crisis and contradictions involved, until towards the end we only have what we have had from the beginning; families. Not that there's anything wrong with that, far from it, but that so much else strikes me as vanity and foolishness.
#15050740
annatar1914 wrote:Interesting observation I've made for those like myself who are PoFo friends and fans of @Victoribus Spolia is that while he is an Anarcho-Capitalist (he actually is much more than that) and I am a Statist and a Socialist of sorts (but much more than that), the practical effect of such beliefs leads me to much the same conclusions as he does as time goes on.

What do I mean? Well, given my views on human nature and determinism, the State as it exists of fallen human beings is only provisional, can only hold back the lawlessness and anarchic tendencies of mankind to a degree, and eventually it fails every time. It cannot build Heaven on Earth, the State can't, and over time can't even keep maintaining it's grip on it's own patch of Earth, either.

So it's an endless cycle, and probably over time increasing the crisis and contradictions involved, until towards the end we only have what we have had from the beginning; families. Not that there's anything wrong with that, far from it, but that so much else strikes me as vanity and foolishness.


There's an interesting reverse side of this problem, an up and down cycle of Barbarism warring with Civilization, from within and without, and it's that if enough people are made aware of the battle, it might even be turned around.

Who truly needs an education in Civics? Pretty much everyone in my opinion, myself included.

Starting with; we can't build anything decent in this life if we don't decide to trust one another more and communicate with each other more. Sure there's time you have to fight, but there's also a time for finding common ground, or at least mutual benefit.
#15051499
In the absence of trust or common ground between rulers and ruled, there is rule by secrecy and deception.

Today I am going to make a few comments about the alleged ''Deep State'', in the US, a Cabal of unelected bureaucrats and agencies in the Federal government and certain private interests joined in the common goals of the Elites in running society.

Communists and Socialists have been saying this for a couple of centuries now, that such a state of affairs exists, that in fact the ruling Elite has to run things in this manner in order for Capitalism to survive. That the Right has appropriated this talking about the Elites and their methods of rule while the ''Left'' has abandoned this concept is one of the ironies of history to be sure.

It's even stranger to the uninformed that the latest Icon of the Right, President Donald J. Trump, is one not only talking about the ''Deep State'' as his enemy, but in reality he is the very embodiment of the true Deep State in action, what with he and his his families long standing links to the the FBI and the National Security establishment as long as there's been such an establishment. Factions develop in a crisis period, and one faction has to win out over another in order for a course correction to be made. He shall, indeed already is, winning a greater place at the table for himself and his family, and this is the way of the world;

''A wise servant shall rule over foolish sons, and shall divide the inheritance among the brethren.''

Proverbs chapter 17:2


For he has been very wise in the ways of the world indeed, and those opposing him have been very foolish.

In a nation with established forms of a Republic, it is necessary for the rulers to not only hide their real decision making process from the masses, but to persuade the masses that the decision making process is all their own in a solemn and public way, that the People have the sovereignty and that their Elite representatives govern through them and not in spite of them. And so the old truth remains that;

''Mundus vult decipi; ergo, decipiatur''
#15051706
annatar1914 wrote:In the absence of trust or common ground between rulers and ruled, there is rule by secrecy and deception.

Today I am going to make a few comments about the alleged ''Deep State'', in the US, a Cabal of unelected bureaucrats and agencies in the Federal government and certain private interests joined in the common goals of the Elites in running society.

Communists and Socialists have been saying this for a couple of centuries now, that such a state of affairs exists, that in fact the ruling Elite has to run things in this manner in order for Capitalism to survive. That the Right has appropriated this talking about the Elites and their methods of rule while the ''Left'' has abandoned this concept is one of the ironies of history to be sure.

It's even stranger to the uninformed that the latest Icon of the Right, President Donald J. Trump, is one not only talking about the ''Deep State'' as his enemy, but in reality he is the very embodiment of the true Deep State in action, what with he and his his families long standing links to the the FBI and the National Security establishment as long as there's been such an establishment. Factions develop in a crisis period, and one faction has to win out over another in order for a course correction to be made. He shall, indeed already is, winning a greater place at the table for himself and his family, and this is the way of the world;

''A wise servant shall rule over foolish sons, and shall divide the inheritance among the brethren.''

Proverbs chapter 17:2


For he has been very wise in the ways of the world indeed, and those opposing him have been very foolish.

In a nation with established forms of a Republic, it is necessary for the rulers to not only hide their real decision making process from the masses, but to persuade the masses that the decision making process is all their own in a solemn and public way, that the People have the sovereignty and that their Elite representatives govern through them and not in spite of them. And so the old truth remains that;

''Mundus vult decipi; ergo, decipiatur''


Now, if I haven't made it any clearer, the reason why there is this suspicion and fear of the Elites is that wealth is gained in this world at it's origins at least, in murder and theft, and so the Rich fear murder and theft of their goods in turn. Those with less envy those with more, those with more plunder and murder those with less. The State exists to try and regulate this so that anything can exist in a Society at all, but is frequently itself a tool of one side or other, haves or have nots.

This is the world in it's brutal honesty. Of course that is too coarse and savage for some people, who prefer the soft and congealed hypocrisy of Liberalism to these truths.

President Trump is however, one who believes in unvarnished Capitalism. Trump is about as Objectivist (like Ayn Rand) as a public figure that has ever been seen, a complete rational egoist and true believer in the free enterprise system. Imagine ''John Galt'' having been elected President of the United States. A President that says he will not allow ''Socialism'' to exist in the United States of America clearly knows the real situation in a way that few in this day and age allow themselves to consciously understand.
#15053985
So what is to be done? What can be done about this Modernity? There is no such animal in reality as a ''traditional revolutionary'', sorry to tell Alexander Dugin that... That path is Nihilism, because revolution partakes of the very nature of Modernity itself, the Faustian/Western civilization. It is trying to drive out the Devils by means of the Prince of Devils. It just doesn't work.

But the radical answer that calls for a Christian response is living Christianity as a full way of life. Of acting in the world with the tools of prayer and fasting and works of mercy and loving kindness towards other human beings.

It is a ''Politics'' (the affairs of the City) that doesn't involve Politics as such, which I have shown said politics just to be human personal action writ large and abstracted.
#15053996
annatar1914 wrote:So what is to be done? What can be done about this Modernity? There is no such animal in reality as a ''traditional revolutionary'', sorry to tell Alexander Dugin that... That path is Nihilism, because revolution partakes of the very nature of Modernity itself, the Faustian/Western civilization. It is trying to drive out the Devils by means of the Prince of Devils. It just doesn't work.

But the radical answer that calls for a Christian response is living Christianity as a full way of life. Of acting in the world with the tools of prayer and fasting and works of mercy and loving kindness towards other human beings.

It is a ''Politics'' (the affairs of the City) that doesn't involve Politics as such, which I have shown said politics just to be human personal action writ large and abstracted.

In other words, believers must be "the leaven in the bread" of human society - rather than exerting real, direct power over people through the political process (which belongs to the fallen world), they must act as moral exemplars, rather in the same way the Daoist philosophers suggested that a 'good emperor' should behave. He should rule in such a way that the people are not even aware that they are being ruled over. He accomplishes everything by doing nothing. To become involved in 'politics', in the dirty business of exerting control and power over people, is to become morally compromised by this world. This is the problem faced by anyone seeking to make the world a better place - to do so using conventional political means would involve the wholesale shedding of human blood. Is there another way...?
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Potemkin wrote:In other words, believers must be "the leaven in the bread" of human society - rather than exerting real, direct power over people through the political process (which belongs to the fallen world), they must act as moral exemplars, rather in the same way the Daoist philosophers suggested that a 'good emperor' should behave. He should rule in such a way that the people are not even aware that they are being ruled over. He accomplishes everything by doing nothing. To become involved in 'politics', in the dirty business of exerting control and power over people, is to become morally compromised by this world. This is the problem faced by anyone seeking to make the world a better place - to do so using conventional political means would involve the wholesale shedding of human blood. Is there another way...?


@Potemkin

Well, all this is true, I indeed think that this is the correct way, after all the aim is salvation, deification of the human person in the World to Come. But, in the interim, as society rises or falls according to it's dialectic, the civic virtue supplied by Christians (who are obedient in all things excepting sin to the laws but who also by their example point society into a higher social direction)should provide no obstacles to Socialism. Why? Because Socialism is one of the natural organic outgrowths that develop from supernatural life and enlightenment granted to men, in my opinion, not to be resisted out of mistaken notions of past organization of social and economic life.

This is in keeping with my belief that strictly speaking the October 1917 Revolution was no Revolution in my opinion, as i've said before. Revolutions fail as all plans of men fail, however acts of God ordained by Him, even the terrible evils permitted by Him to test and chastise mankind, do not fail of their effect in His plan.

So the real earthly issue comes down to Citizenship in this world, and the best citizenship in my opinion entails service towards the common good, personally and collectively. And sometimes, as surely during the Great Patriotic War, service means shedding of human blood defending the nation, under obedience to those God Himself has ordained as the Rulers, wicked and Anti-Christian men they themselves might be personally.

What this precisely means for future developments I do not know, honestly. Except that Christianity must be personally cultivated as a way of life
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@Potemkin

Well, all this is true, I indeed think that this is the correct way, after all the aim is salvation, deification of the human person in the World to Come. But, in the interim, as society rises or falls according to it's dialectic, the civic virtue supplied by Christians (who are obedient in all things excepting sin to the laws but who also by their example point society into a higher social direction)should provide no obstacles to Socialism. Why? Because Socialism is one of the natural organic outgrowths that develop from supernatural life and enlightenment granted to men, in my opinion, not to be resisted out of mistaken notions of past organization of social and economic life.

This is in keeping with my belief that strictly speaking the October 1917 Revolution was no Revolution in my opinion, as i've said before. Revolutions fail as all plans of men fail, however acts of God ordained by Him, even the terrible evils permitted by Him to test and chastise mankind, do not fail of their effect in His plan.

So the real earthly issue comes down to Citizenship in this world, and the best citizenship in my opinion entails service towards the common good, personally and collectively. And sometimes, as surely during the Great Patriotic War, service means shedding of human blood defending the nation, under obedience to those God Himself has ordained as the Rulers, wicked and Anti-Christian men they themselves might be personally.

What this precisely means for future developments I do not know, honestly. Except that Christianity must be personally cultivated as a way of life


@Potemkin ;

I got to thinking about my response to your earlier reply in this thread, and I was highly unsatisfied with my reply, especially after I read this again from Marx, referring to Hegel in the ''Phenomenology of Spirit;

‘Hegel adopts the standpoint of modern political economy. He grasps labour as the essence, the self-confirming essence of man; he sees only the positive and not the negative side of labour. Labour is man’s coming to be for himself within alienation [Entäusserung] or as alienated man.’


And looking at this in relation to the Master/Slave Dialectic...

I brought the question down to a level that a Alexander Kojeve might put it, where the Dialectic is resolved (no master and no slave, but the citizen of the French Revolution's-Napoleon's ''rational republic'') by earthly citizenship. Hence my dis-satisfaction.

The 'negative side of Labour' within the Capitalist system ensures that this Bourgeoisie dream would never happen, not since the Industrial Revolution and Modernity itself, and not now even since World War Three was already fought and won by Universal Capitalism/''America'' back in 1991.

One would have to think dialectically to see why, and Scripturally, in an Apocalyptic, Revelatory way. It's the same, they have Identity.

The Ways of Divine Providence, the unfolding of the Dialectic, mandated that evil men, God-Fighting Antitheists, would have to be the ones to carry out a Communist Revolution in 1917 in Russia, and win until 1989-1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But who fought for the Revolution these men started, in the 1990's when the wreckers and looters came to power?



Starting @ 11:14, you see the protestors against Yeltsin, with Imperial Tsarist Orthodox flags and the Red Flags of the Soviet Union, with no dichotomy, defending Revolution out of the most truly Conservative and Traditionalist of motives, and defending at the same time the radical break from human history after the Fall which occurred with Christ's Incarnation, and the Theophany of God, which necessitates Revolution but despises Rebellion/Counter-Revolution...

Yes, it is through Alienation that we know our Fall, that we were made for better things, and that the punishment has been servitude, overcome with both justice and love-which is the same thing!

Because whose ''tradition'' or ''conservatism'' is to be defended, that of the Master, or that of the oppressed Slave who has been restored his Image, being made in the Image of God and never meant to be a beast of burden, or a meal for the parasites?
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