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No, I just don't care to have a firm opinion on how best to interpret people.
It would help if that wasn't completely ludicrous.
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Someone(s) have sent out pro-worker messages to unsecured receipt printers connected to the internet
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
- Start date
No, I just don't care to have a firm opinion on how best to interpret people.
You claimed that "defund the police" is a secret communist slogan that actually means "abolish the police".
Just, no.
I support police abolition. I also support defunding the police. These are two different things and very obviously so.
Even though I personally support police abolition, I'm not going to sit here and watch you try to discredit the many, many people who support defunding the police without supporting police abolition by claiming they're somehow being manipulated by me and my secret communist psyops friends. We live in a world where the police are going around murdering people with relative impunity. Whatever abstract problems I might have with the institution of policing does not prevent recognition of that fact and the need to ameliorate it immediately without needing to go and first build a society in which the police can be safely abolished.
I don't know who you think is a communist (except the one person whose username you subsequently deleted, well done for doing that) but if this is the logic you're using, why is anyone supposed to trust your judgement, because all you really seem to have is that if communists support an argument, then anyone who supports that argument must either be a communist or being manipulated by communists into supporting that argument. That's weak.
And speaking of weak. What bullshit argument against communism was that? You're saying that communism is bad because it's utopian. Wow, what a huge, galaxy brain argument. Who would have thought the hypothetical end point of all human social development would be utopian. I can't wait to see what you've got for us next. Will it be some speculative evopsych garbage about the inherent selfishness of human nature? You think noone has heard this before? You think even people who are actually communists have not heard better arguments than this?
A little secret for you. All post-Enlightenment political thought is utopian. Liberalism is utopian. Liberalism had its revolutions and its violence and its "new world" that never manifested (and instead just gave birth to a world where cops kill people with impunity). Conservatism is utopian, it just likes to imagine the past as utopia rather than the future. The reality of our political universe is that the boundaries between politics and morality have completely broken down. "Pragmatism" is only ever a lie intended to conceal a moral position (or indifference to another moral position). If you don't choose a utopia of your own, you're going to end up living in someone else's, and you might not like it there. It might even turn out to be a place where cops can kill you with impunity..
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He did.
I do.
I did not claim this. It's not a secret.
I didn't claim that. I said that the phrase was coopted by reasonable people who don't want to abolish the police. Am I discrediting people by calling them reasonable? Am I saying they're being manipulated by saying they coopted a movement?
No idea what you're referring to. I explicitly aim my sights at Seanchaidh, I have not deleted the name from any posts. I have also commented on Revnak, though not with the same resentment, as Revnak is not a shameless tankie.
I have never said anything remotely like that. In this specific instance, I suggested the person printing the receipts is not a communist but is manipulated by them because in this specific instance, they made manifestos in line with a normal pro-labor movement but then directed people to a source that wants to eliminate jobs as we know them, which is a contradiction I have to believe they're unaware of.
No, I'm saying communism is uncompromising because it's utopian.
This is complete nonsense. I don't think there's anything I could say about you that would ever make you look sillier than this part. Pragmatism is a lie? You believe it's impossible to take the best option available in the moment without a specific end goal? Why?
You're literally the only person here who has claimed it, so either it's a secret only you are in on or its bullshit. I'm guessing bullshit.
So people who want to defund the police co-opted the slogan "defund the police" from people who were only pretending to want to defund the police as a cover for some ludicrous version of police abolition you made up.
I don't think that's how co-option works.
You realise, once again, that these are not incompatible things.
Again, I personally do want to eliminate jobs as we know them. I don't think that is in any way an unreasonable position or an impractical position, but it is a long term position, in that it can only be the outcome of a sequence of other changes that make it eventually possible. It is in no way incompatible with supporting labour movements in the present. Indeed, supporting labour movements in the present is a huge part of how we end up with a society which can eliminate jobs as we know them. Conversely, labour activism has always been stronger and more successful when accompanied by a broader social vision. The two are not only compatible, they are synergetic.
But again, you're indulging this ludicrous pretence that eliminating jobs as we know them means firing everyone tomorrow, and then declaring that position to be impractical and/or incompatible with labour reform. Just like you're pretending that police abolition means getting rid of all the police right now and letting people murder each other with impunity (without needing to join the police first). These are not the 4D chess galaxy brain takedowns you think they are, because they don't relate to the actual positions anyone holds. That's what makes so much of your talk about needing to understand people's positions ironic, because you haven't done that, and it's not because these positions haven't been explained to you
Capitalism has already eliminated jobs as people knew them. It's done it several times over, in fact. If you think it's not practical for us to do the same, why do you think that?
..and that's simply wrong.
If anything defines the history of communism, and in particular the failure of communism, it is that the particular, secular-eschatological form of utopianism communism presents leads to an infinite potential for compromise. If you believe in an "end" that will retrospectively justify everything, it becomes horrifyingly easy to compromise in the present knowing that the future will absolve you.
Compromise is not an inherently good thing. There have to be things you won't compromise.
What is the "best option in the moment", Tstorm?
The best option for whom.
tstorm823 thinks that the fact that there are people who want to eliminate the police and would also see it as an improvement if it had less funding is suspect for some reason.
Nobody is hiding, nobody is pretending, nothing is a secret. There are just multiple groups of people, some of whom want the police gone, and some of whom just want them to be smaller. I'm not saying the people who want them gone also wouldn't like them smaller. BUT before people who want to keep the police indefinitely started joining in for making the police smaller, the phrase "defund the police" was being used by just people who want the police abolished. And then it evolved. It's not a conspiracy, it's a timeline of events.
It is only a testament to your insecurity that plain descriptions of how things are seem like attacks to you. Like, you're not going to find within my posts here all the moral posturing you're accusing me of. We're not currently having an argument about the merits of any of these things, we are arguing here about who believes what. As best as I can tell, you're all mad at me for thinking it important to know when someone has self-identified as a communist.
That isn't a relevant question in the argument between utopianism and pragmatism. One could just as easily snidely ask "Your utopia is perfect? Perfect for whom?"
Which of course becomes an untenable position when the system is clearly not working. Which leads to the conclusion that either conservatives do not notice the system isn't working or that they are fine with the system not working, which then leads to "everything is broken and only the government can fix it, but I got mine and screw everyone else''
For instance the American healthcare system pre(and to be fair also post) Obama care was not a system that was working. Not unless you were already rich. There's also no indication that there is a working system where corporation puts their profit second and don't endanger the populace unless the government forces them to do so. Would companies put much stock in the safety of their products without regulations? Probably not, since those government regulations emerged as a reaction to them explicitly not doing so. The gilded age and industrial revolutions kinda show what happens when we demand the government take a step back and just blindly trust that there is a working system to protect us. People didn't like it, and the horrors of communism likely emerged as a direct reaction to the mistreatment people suffered under those um....''working'' systems.
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And nobody is purely conservative. To work from your example, Republicans have many thoughts about changing the way healthcare is financed.
But also, there are very few examples of "the system clearly not working". We have one reality in which we live, and it is incredibly difficult to analyze accurately what might have happened if things were done differently. There are always going to be reasonable arguments that things would have been better if done differently, and equally reasonable arguments that things would have been much worse if not done the way they were.
Doesn't really engage the point being made, which is that 'pragmatism' is not an objective, non-ideological thing.
OK, so we just have blind insistence that you know other peoples' philosophies better than they do themselves.
Can I try? Conservatism stands for rigid enforcement of indentured servitude, lowering wages, and an insistence that the "nuclear family" is the only valid way for anybody to live their life. That's what you said, and I know what conservatism is.
Do either of you read what you're complaining about?
Me: " We have a shared sense of community and national identity that is independent of individual ethnicity. "
Him: " It's not 'independent' in that it matters very much whether one's ethnicity happens to be one of the white ones."
The it refers to "Shared sense of community and national identity". Therefore, Seanchaidh was claiming that inclusion in the American community and national identity depends on whether your "ethnicity is one of the white ones". And then you claimed he didn't say that non-white people do not share in the American identity. But unless you think he was saying the inverse, that white people are out and everyone else is in, that's what that means.
This is a silly fight. You're both silly.
Is there reason to engage that point? No, pragmatism is not objective. It can be non-ideological, but isn't necessarily. But that's not the distinction between pragmatism and utopianism, is it? I don't see any reason that point was made, outside of an attempt to sidestep the argument instead of offer an actual refutation, so the best I can offer is to not engage it.
I mean, if that's the version of this story you want to believe, I don't think anything's going to change your mind. However, does it not strike you as very silly to believe that until some unspecified but recent point the only people who vocally supported defunding the police were "communists".
Do you think everyone has been sitting around for the past few decades watching the growing militarization and increasing political license given to police departments and never bothered to actually say "hey, maybe we should defund the police and spend that money on fixing actual social problems". Because if so, you clearly have less faith in humanity than I do.
As far as I can tell, noone has "self-identified" as a communist, and you've provided no evidence to the contrary save your own speculation.
But anyway, let me point out something that should be incredibly obvious.
Police abolition and work abolition aren't traditionally communist positions, they're anarchist positions. They're things anarchists have been talking about almost since before communism was a thing. (Non-anarchist) communist criticisms of the police are typically aimed at the interests the police serve, not the institution of policing itself. Fundamentally, communists don't want to abolish the state, they want to harness and use the power of the state as a progressive instrument, police and all.
Anarchists fundamentally reject the idea that there can be a benevolent use of (centralized) state power. For most anarchists, the institution of policing is inherently coercive because police exist, above all else, to protect the state from its citizens. Police are not public servants who protect people from crimes and catch criminals (they're actually extremely bad at both those things) they exist as agents of state power. When a police officer puts on their uniform, they become a special type of person who everyone else has to obey and listen to on pain of violence. That is their role, that is their actual purpose, and that is what I and many other people think needs to be abolished.
The person who arrests criminals and solves crimes should be a citizen and a public servant who answers directly to the community they serve, not a special, legally protected class of paramilitary agent with the power to exercise violence on anyone who doesn't do what they say. Police are not the former, they are the latter. No amount of pathetic liberal hand wringing, no amount of ineffective bias or sensitivity training, is going to fundamentally change what the police are, and if you think otherwise I think you're the one who needs to check your expectations of reality.
All this has been explained to you before. I'm pretty sure I've explained it.
Well done, that is literally the point.
Before the Enlightenment, there was no need to answer that question because no answer you could give would ever matter. The full power of the state was theoretically incarnated in a single person, and thus the policy of the state was subject only to the whim of that person. The only force which could ever hold that person to account was God, but whatever judgement God might pass was far, far away. Thus, there was no responsibility on the sovereign to conduct themselves in accordance with any morality, they lived in an amoral world of politics in which power itself was its own justification.
The Enlightenment reinjected morality into politics. It let people imagine the possibility of a society or a government which was not just powerful, but also good. Government could no longer afford to be subject only to the theatrical whims of a bored monarch, it now had to take responsibility for delivering the good that its people wanted, and if the government failed in that duty, the possibility now existed of replacing it with a government that would.
Liberalism is utopian. It has always been utopian, because utopianism is just the merging of politics and morality. The American revolution was not a petty political squabble between rival autocrats, it was dressed up as a moral struggle, the struggle for a good society, full of good things like freedom and individual rights. The French revolution tore down the façade of European absolutism and showed the enormous (and terrible) power of a population united not by the fear of sovereign power but by belief in a common good. Pragmatism, the ability to separate politics and morality or to treat power as simply power without moral responsibility governing its use, could never compete and has never competed.
Politics, at the end of the day, is a poor motivator. People will obey power simply because it exists, but only reluctantly and without passion. The best and most powerful way to motivate large groups of people has always been morality, and a politics based on morality is stronger and, ironically, more pragmatic.
This is a joke, right? This topic stems from r/antiwork, which I copied and pasted from their frequently asked questions the line that says "some of us are communists". It's not a point of contention or wild accusation, a bunch of people on this forum are communists and have described themselves as such. I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth by using a term they've used to describe themselves.
I... ummm.... I.... well, you see... ugh.
Communism - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Have you really never heard someone say "communism is a classless, stateless society"? Yes, they want to abolish the state.
That is not anyone else's definition of utopianism but your own.
I don't give the tiniest fuck who is or isn't a communist. That does not actually bother me, because I don't consider communism a particular unreasonable position. Now, I can't recall anyone on this forum actually describing themselves as a communist, and I certainly can't recall anyone in this thread describing themselves as a communist, but I don't really care whether or not anyone actually is. That's not the issue.
The issue is that your logic for deciding whether or not someone is a communist has nothing to do with whether someone claims to be a communist. You are ascribing communism to the positions people actually hold, and that wouldn't be so bad except you're completely fucking wrong.
And, I think you just proved my point.
You don't actually know which definition of communism you're using, do you?
Because up until now you've treated communism as if it represents a coherent ideological system with beliefs and policies and clear motivations, which naturally lead me to assume you were talking about Marxist communism (probably Marxist-Leninism, for reasons the article points out).
Now you've retreated back into a much broader definition which could never incorporate the kinds of judgements and statements that you've previously made, and are pretending that was the definition you were using all along.
Have the decency to just stop at this point.
One thing that I think happens to you when spend a lot of time in academia is that it becomes very hard to figure out what you actually believe, because you're exposed to so many positions all the time that finding a personal centre in them is often very difficult. For this reason, I sometimes just borrow other people's arguments. Sometimes, I borrow the arguments of very influential people whose work has shaped the understanding of an entire topic..
I don't advertise this, because I don't like to appeal to authority. However, please don't take that as an excuse to appeal to a lack of authority.
Can you give me another definition of utopianism that actually works?
What logic? What are you talking about? Go to this page. That is who this thread is ultimately about.
Hey, @Seanchaidh. Could you do me a personal favor and describe your political persuasions in a word or two? Anyone else is welcome as well. I'm not guessing here based on my own perceptions, I'm just taking people at their word.
That's not how words work. You can't say "communists don't want to abolish the state", and when I point out that they generally do, you can't go "oh, that's the broad definition, I thought you were using a narrow one." Like, the opposite would have worked, if broadly communists didn't want to abolish the state, but a niche group does, you could very reasonably say "that's a narrow definition, but broadly you are wrong." It doesn't make any sense at all for you to say that I'm broadly right but not in a narrow case, especially when you were the one making a broad statement that's broadly incorrect.
I could do that a lot of times in different ways; each time would leave something crucial out, or imply more than I actually think.
For example, I oppose exploitation. Those are two words. Opposition is fairly easy to conceive of, but exploitation is a word that people use in lots of different ways, some of them rather benign. Neither is it the whole of my political stances; leaving it at that would (and probably should) lead to confusion.
I support the mass of people in the class struggle; I take the philosophical justification of democracy seriously, and believe that capitalism is necessarily anti-democratic; I think Marx's analysis of capitalism is broadly correct and enduringly relevant; I judge that the United States is in practice an oligarchy dominated by a military industrial complex, and that it has a media landscape that largely exists to further the interests of that military industrial complex and the rest of the corporate elite; I believe that much of what people think they know about foreign countries is little more than war propaganda; I believe that the so-called culture war is inflamed mostly to the purpose of manufacturing not just controversies that distract from class struggle but actual cruelties that people of good conscience can hardly accept (and that are yet endorsed by similar numbers of people apparently without either good conscience or clear understanding).
You'd like me to describe myself as a communist, I suppose, but I should remind you that
Or to put it in another way, communism is hardly specific enough to make the sort of leaps of logic you've described as necessary to interpret another person's beliefs: communists disagree about a lot of things. I believe that communism is, in general terms, a good thing. And I think a person very strange if they both understand what I mean by that and disagree.
In most contexts, I would happily take you up on this argument, and make the case that I both understand and disagree. But I'm currently caught in the midst of a much shallower argument that you have the power to settle. You may think that I do not understand communism, and we certainly disagree tremendously on that and nearly every other topic, but I have been accused of of jumping to the conclusion that you are a communist based on false premises when I am genuinely just believing you in your own characterizations of yourself. I understand I have a different view of the implications of being a communist, but I would not call you that if you had never done so yourself.
