LWDT 8: Hitting the Marx

[Democratic Communist Federation]

They may enjoy the verbal spars but I recognize you for what you are and I realize debate is largely pointless.

I saw what was happening when that person was joined by others, and I bowed out.

[Kubra]

Also gonna put out there, "primitive communism" was an altogether late development in Marx's thought, simply because it was later on he and Engels got into the just developing field of anthropology.
Also, "late stage capitalism" is something developed after Marx.

[Novus America]

Also gonna put out there, "primitive communism" was an altogether late development in Marx's thought, simply because it was later on he and Engels got into the just developing field of anthropology.
Also, "late stage capitalism" is something developed after Marx.

It is still part of Marxism.
And although the exact term “late stage capitalism” came after, Marx still though the Victorian era was when capitalism should end because it could not go much further.

Of course that was wrong.

But the whole Hegelian thing plus materialism is bunk.

[Duvniask]

You'll notice Marx doesn't regard the subsistence-based nature of primitive communism to somehow be a "great" period suddenly ruined by a "decadent" capitalism.

Reactionaries are anti-progressives, which Marx was not. It doesn't have to be a real, actually existing state of affairs which they long to return to, it only has to be their perception of it. In fact, the idealization of the past is pretty much par for the course.


The only reason I can think of for you to keep referring to it being "Victorian" is because you want to dismiss it for being old. It's different than referring to something such as liberalism as an Enlightenment-ideology, because "Enlightenment" as a term is itself descriptive of a whole bunch of tendencies. You calling it "Victorian" is just you dissing it for being old, which is stupid. The teachings of the Ancient Greeks can still be relevant and have piercing insights even if they are more than two millennia old. Age doesn't matter.


Given you aren't actually giving me any reason to believe you, it'll suffice to say that I disagree.

Primitive communism is not real... his view of the past did not correspond well with reality.
It is still saying that things were good but ebul private property ruined it.

Again pretty much nobody who glorifies the past wants to return to it exactly, or bring it back exactly. On certain aspects of it.
How is saying “we should bring back communism but with modern technology” that different than “we should bring back 50s moral standards with modern technology”.

Although something old might still be worth reading, (and a lot of stuff the ancient Greeks believed was completely false BTW) it still has to be considered that it cannot necessarily apply to the modern world.
Sure you can adopt the best parts of it, with modifications to account for what has changed and to remove what was wrong, but adopting it wholesale as and ideology is not a great idea.
Especially if it failed badly in the past.

End of History Neoliberalism is stupid to continue in the present, because it was proven wrong with time. It is nice on theory but it does not work.
Same with Marxism.

Remember according to Marx the Victorian period was late stage capitalism.
You cannot deny he was absolutely wrong on that.

Arguing with you about what's reactionary is pointless.

But I will say this: being a Marxist doesn't commit you to agreeing with Marx about the time window for capitalist development. His error was in the ability of social forces within the capitalist epoch to co-opt and compromise with its opposition (in a way favorable to further growth and accumulation). A failure to foresee the exact way things would work out (and the time scale) does not discredit historical materialism or any in-depth analysis and description Marx made about the social forces of capitalism. It's an underestimation of the strength of phenomena, not a failure to understand them.

[Novus America]

Primitive communism is not real... his view of the past did not correspond well with reality.
It is still saying that things were good but ebul private property ruined it.

Again pretty much nobody who glorifies the past wants to return to it exactly, or bring it back exactly. On certain aspects of it.
How is saying “we should bring back communism but with modern technology” that different than “we should bring back 50s moral standards with modern technology”.

Although something old might still be worth reading, (and a lot of stuff the ancient Greeks believed was completely false BTW) it still has to be considered that it cannot necessarily apply to the modern world.
Sure you can adopt the best parts of it, with modifications to account for what has changed and to remove what was wrong, but adopting it wholesale as and ideology is not a great idea.
Especially if it failed badly in the past.

End of History Neoliberalism is stupid to continue in the present, because it was proven wrong with time. It is nice on theory but it does not work.
Same with Marxism.

Remember according to Marx the Victorian period was late stage capitalism.
You cannot deny he was absolutely wrong on that.

Arguing with you about what's reactionary is pointless.

But I will say this: being a Marxist doesn't commit you to agreeing with Marx about the time window for capitalist development. His error was in the ability of social forces within the capitalist epoch to co-opt and compromise with its opposition (in a way favorable to further growth and accumulation). A failure to foresee the exact way things would work out (and the time scale) does not discredit historical materialism or any in-depth analysis and description Marx made about the social forces of capitalism. It's an underestimation of the strength of phenomena, not a failure to understand them.

One you have now made Marxism unfalsifiable. Thus pretty meaningless. You will just keep pushing out the time frame to infinity.

Except his historical materialism is a grossly Eurocentric and simplistic view that is not actually a good explanation of why many things happened nor is it a good predictor of what may happen.

He made some valid criticisms although some are no longer that meaningful because much has changed in ways he never expected. But beyond that it is a dead end.

[Duvniask]

Arguing with you about what's reactionary is pointless.

But I will say this: being a Marxist doesn't commit you to agreeing with Marx about the time window for capitalist development. His error was in the ability of social forces within the capitalist epoch to co-opt and compromise with its opposition (in a way favorable to further growth and accumulation). A failure to foresee the exact way things would work out (and the time scale) does not discredit historical materialism or any in-depth analysis and description Marx made about the social forces of capitalism. It's an underestimation of the strength of phenomena, not a failure to understand them.

One you have now made Marxism unfalsifiable. Thus pretty meaningless. You will just keep pushing out the time frame to infinity.

No prediction about the future can be "proven" until it actually occurs. What can be verified (or falsified), however, are the factors we would expect to occur if it were going to happen; in other words, finding evidence that points in the direction of the event we're predicting. Evidence of such would strengthen the theory.

Let's take an example from another branch of the sciences:
We might hypothesize that an asteroid will hit the Earth sooner of later. We might not know when it will happen with exact certainty. Will it happen in our lifetime? Who knows. That doesn't mean such a hypothesis is somehow wrong or unfalsifiable. Sure we could claim til the end of the world that it would happen (even if it doesn't), but we can also do more than that. We can evaluate its likelihood with reference to the laws of physics, by observation of asteroid objects in our Solar system, studying of earlier events (we already know such an event has occurred before: the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, or the extinction of the Dinosaurs, for example). This, as a very simplified description of scientific practice, shows how we can come up with probability estimates for impact events and say with quite some certainty that it's probably going to happen again, at some point. The probability estimate might not be entirely accurate. It might predict an impact event at the wrong time because someone miscalculated (literally and figuratively) some part of the system or didn't account for a piece of missing information.

What Marx and Engels did, along with those who have followed in their tradition, was to try and figure out some of the inner workings of social change. They have sought to describe a whole bunch of social phenomena which they posited will one day lead to the collapse of capitalism (barring other profoundly impactful events such as the destruction of human civilization). Marx misjudging the time-window for its occurrence doesn't make the theory unfalsifiable, in the same way that an astronomer misjudging the likelihood of an asteroid impact occurring soon doesn't invalidate the claim that it probably will occur at some, unspecified time in the future. We can't predict such things with absolute certainty, in part because we don't have complete information. Marx wasn't perfect, but that doesn't invalidate his theory.

---

From Marxism a bunch of hypotheses about historical development can be extracted which are also falsifiable. We get some examples from Ernest Mandel in his Introduction to Capital:

"...It was intended as an explanation of what would happen to labour, machinery, technology, the size of enterprises, the social structure of the population, the discontinuity of economic growth, and the relations between workers and work, as the capitalist mode of production unfolded all its terrifying potential. From that point of view, the achievement is truly impressive. It is precisely because of Marx's capacity to discover the long-term laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production in its essence, irrespective of thousands of 'impurities' and of secondary aspects, that his long term predictions –the laws of accumulation of capital, stepped-up technological progress, accelerated increase in the productivity and intensity of labour, growing concentration and centralization of capital, transformation of the great majority of economically active people into sellers of labour-power, declining rate of profit, increased rate of surplus value, periodically recurrent recessions, inevitable class struggle between Capital and Labour, increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history..."

"...In fact, it would be very easy to 'prove' Marx's analysis to have been wrong, if experience had shown, for example, that the more capitalist industry develops, the smaller and smaller the average factory becomes, the less it depends upon new technology, the more its capital is supplied by the workers themselves, the more workers become owners of their factories, the less the part of wages taken by consumer goods becomes (and the greater becomes the part of wages used for buying the workers' own means of production). If, in addition, there had been decades without economic fluctuations and a full-scale disappearance of trade unions and employers' associations (all flowing from the disappearance of contradictions between Capital and Labour, inasmuch as workers increasingly become the controllers of their own means and conditions of production), then one could indeed say that Capital was so much rubbish and had dismally failed to predict what would happen in the real capitalist world a century after its publication. It is sufficient to compare the real history of the period since 1867 on the one hand with what Marx predicted it would be, and on the other with any such alternative 'laws of motion', to understand how remarkable indeed was Marx's theoretical achievement and how strongly it stands up against the experimental test of history."

Except his historical materialism is a grossly Eurocentric and simplistic view that is not actually a good explanation of why many things happened nor is it a good predictor of what may happen.

He made some valid criticisms although some are no longer that meaningful because much has changed in ways he never expected. But beyond that it is a dead end.

Essentially the same things as you said before. Nothing new.

[Novus America]

One you have now made Marxism unfalsifiable. Thus pretty meaningless. You will just keep pushing out the time frame to infinity.

No prediction about the future can be "proven" until it actually occurs. What can be verified (or falsified), however, are the factors we would expect to occur if it were going to happen; in other words, finding evidence that points in the direction of the event we're predicting. Evidence of such would strengthen the theory.

Let's take an example from another branch of the sciences:
We might hypothesize that an asteroid will hit the Earth sooner of later. We might not know when it will happen with exact certainty. Will it happen in our lifetime? Who knows. That doesn't mean such a hypothesis is somehow wrong or unfalsifiable. Sure we could claim til the end of the world that it would happen (even if it doesn't), but we can also do more than that. We can evaluate its likelihood with reference to the laws of physics, by observation of asteroid objects in our Solar system, studying of earlier events (we already know such an event has occurred before: the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, or the extinction of the Dinosaurs, for example). This, as a very simplified description of scientific practice, shows how we can come up with probability estimates for impact events and say with quite some certainty that it's probably going to happen again, at some point. The probability estimate might not be entirely accurate. It might predict an impact event at the wrong time because someone miscalculated (literally and figuratively) some part of the system or didn't account for a piece of missing information.

What Marx and Engels did, along with those who have followed in their tradition, was to try and figure out some of the inner workings of social change. They have sought to describe a whole bunch of social phenomena which they posited will one day lead to the collapse of capitalism (barring other profoundly impactful events such as the destruction of human civilization). Marx misjudging the time-window for its occurrence doesn't make the theory unfalsifiable, in the same way that an astronomer misjudging the likelihood of an asteroid impact occurring soon doesn't invalidate the claim that it probably will occur at some, unspecified time in the future. We can't predict such things with absolute certainty, in part because we don't have complete information. Marx wasn't perfect, but that doesn't invalidate his theory.

---

From Marxism a bunch of hypotheses about historical development can be extracted which are also falsifiable. We get some examples from Ernest Mandel in his Introduction to Capital:

"...It was intended as an explanation of what would happen to labour, machinery, technology, the size of enterprises, the social structure of the population, the discontinuity of economic growth, and the relations between workers and work, as the capitalist mode of production unfolded all its terrifying potential. From that point of view, the achievement is truly impressive. It is precisely because of Marx's capacity to discover the long-term laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production in its essence, irrespective of thousands of 'impurities' and of secondary aspects, that his long term predictions –the laws of accumulation of capital, stepped-up technological progress, accelerated increase in the productivity and intensity of labour, growing concentration and centralization of capital, transformation of the great majority of economically active people into sellers of labour-power, declining rate of profit, increased rate of surplus value, periodically recurrent recessions, inevitable class struggle between Capital and Labour, increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history..."

"...In fact, it would be very easy to 'prove' Marx's analysis to have been wrong, if experience had shown, for example, that the more capitalist industry develops, the smaller and smaller the average factory becomes, the less it depends upon new technology, the more its capital is supplied by the workers themselves, the more workers become owners of their factories, the less the part of wages taken by consumer goods becomes (and the greater becomes the part of wages used for buying the workers' own means of production). If, in addition, there had been decades without economic fluctuations and a full-scale disappearance of trade unions and employers' associations (all flowing from the disappearance of contradictions between Capital and Labour, inasmuch as workers increasingly become the controllers of their own means and conditions of production), then one could indeed say that Capital was so much rubbish and had dismally failed to predict what would happen in the real capitalist world a century after its publication. It is sufficient to compare the real history of the period since 1867 on the one hand with what Marx predicted it would be, and on the other with any such alternative 'laws of motion', to understand how remarkable indeed was Marx's theoretical achievement and how strongly it stands up against the experimental test of history."

Except his historical materialism is a grossly Eurocentric and simplistic view that is not actually a good explanation of why many things happened nor is it a good predictor of what may happen.

He made some valid criticisms although some are no longer that meaningful because much has changed in ways he never expected. But beyond that it is a dead end.

Essentially the same things as you said before. Nothing new.

“declining rate of profit”
That whole thing only really applies to things with no significant barriers to entry, that are fungible, not scalable, no real brand loyalty or switching costs, like taxis. Plus the result is things like Taxi medallions not global revolution creating a utopia.

“increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history”

Umm except the revolutionary attempts to overthrow “capitalism” (the idea that it is a single thing is pretty silly) actually reached their height around 1918. And declined greatly in several periods. Because they are not at an all time high, not on a generally upward trend over the entire period since him, and have significantly declined in several times and in several places, and never really been much a force in many places, then we have falsified that.

I mean we can say a meteor probably will strike because one has struck before and we know meteors can strike.

But the main conclusion of Marxism is more like the Book of Revelations being falsifiable.
Because Marxian communism has never been achieved. Because a revolution that tries to ban private property does not achieve it.

Besides the fact Hegelian theory is silly (history is not moving towards some universal and final end point beyond perhaps the universe collapsing) the whole idea that we can create a universal theory for the whole human experience is silly.

Although obviously material conditions have an impact on people, people react to them in different ways, and different cultures go through different phases in different orders in different manners, and are not moving towards any single goal.

[Pyrghium]

No prediction about the future can be "proven" until it actually occurs. What can be verified (or falsified), however, are the factors we would expect to occur if it were going to happen; in other words, finding evidence that points in the direction of the event we're predicting. Evidence of such would strengthen the theory.

Let's take an example from another branch of the sciences:
We might hypothesize that an asteroid will hit the Earth sooner of later. We might not know when it will happen with exact certainty. Will it happen in our lifetime? Who knows. That doesn't mean such a hypothesis is somehow wrong or unfalsifiable. Sure we could claim til the end of the world that it would happen (even if it doesn't), but we can also do more than that. We can evaluate its likelihood with reference to the laws of physics, by observation of asteroid objects in our Solar system, studying of earlier events (we already know such an event has occurred before: the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, or the extinction of the Dinosaurs, for example). This, as a very simplified description of scientific practice, shows how we can come up with probability estimates for impact events and say with quite some certainty that it's probably going to happen again, at some point. The probability estimate might not be entirely accurate. It might predict an impact event at the wrong time because someone miscalculated (literally and figuratively) some part of the system or didn't account for a piece of missing information.

What Marx and Engels did, along with those who have followed in their tradition, was to try and figure out some of the inner workings of social change. They have sought to describe a whole bunch of social phenomena which they posited will one day lead to the collapse of capitalism (barring other profoundly impactful events such as the destruction of human civilization). Marx misjudging the time-window for its occurrence doesn't make the theory unfalsifiable, in the same way that an astronomer misjudging the likelihood of an asteroid impact occurring soon doesn't invalidate the claim that it probably will occur at some, unspecified time in the future. We can't predict such things with absolute certainty, in part because we don't have complete information. Marx wasn't perfect, but that doesn't invalidate his theory.

---

From Marxism a bunch of hypotheses about historical development can be extracted which are also falsifiable. We get some examples from Ernest Mandel in his Introduction to Capital:

"...It was intended as an explanation of what would happen to labour, machinery, technology, the size of enterprises, the social structure of the population, the discontinuity of economic growth, and the relations between workers and work, as the capitalist mode of production unfolded all its terrifying potential. From that point of view, the achievement is truly impressive. It is precisely because of Marx's capacity to discover the long-term laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production in its essence, irrespective of thousands of 'impurities' and of secondary aspects, that his long term predictions –the laws of accumulation of capital, stepped-up technological progress, accelerated increase in the productivity and intensity of labour, growing concentration and centralization of capital, transformation of the great majority of economically active people into sellers of labour-power, declining rate of profit, increased rate of surplus value, periodically recurrent recessions, inevitable class struggle between Capital and Labour, increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history..."

"...In fact, it would be very easy to 'prove' Marx's analysis to have been wrong, if experience had shown, for example, that the more capitalist industry develops, the smaller and smaller the average factory becomes, the less it depends upon new technology, the more its capital is supplied by the workers themselves, the more workers become owners of their factories, the less the part of wages taken by consumer goods becomes (and the greater becomes the part of wages used for buying the workers' own means of production). If, in addition, there had been decades without economic fluctuations and a full-scale disappearance of trade unions and employers' associations (all flowing from the disappearance of contradictions between Capital and Labour, inasmuch as workers increasingly become the controllers of their own means and conditions of production), then one could indeed say that Capital was so much rubbish and had dismally failed to predict what would happen in the real capitalist world a century after its publication. It is sufficient to compare the real history of the period since 1867 on the one hand with what Marx predicted it would be, and on the other with any such alternative 'laws of motion', to understand how remarkable indeed was Marx's theoretical achievement and how strongly it stands up against the experimental test of history."

Essentially the same things as you said before. Nothing new.

“declining rate of profit”
That whole thing only really applies to things with no significant barriers to entry, that are fungible, not scalable, no real brand loyalty or switching costs, like taxis. Plus the result is things like Taxi medallions not global revolution creating a utopia.

“increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history”

Umm except the revolutionary attempts to overthrow “capitalism” (the idea that it is a single thing is pretty silly) actually reached their height around 1918. And declined greatly in several periods. Because they are not at an all time high, not on a generally upward trend over the entire period since him, and have significantly declined in several times and in several places, and never really been much a force in many places, then we have falsified that.

I mean we can say a meteor probably will strike because one has struck before and we know meteors can strike.

But the main conclusion of Marxism is more like the Book of Revelations being falsifiable.
Because Marxian communism has never been achieved. Because a revolution that tries to ban private property does not achieve it.

Besides the fact Hegelian theory is silly (history is not moving towards some universal and final end point beyond perhaps the universe collapsing) the whole idea that we can create a universal theory for the whole human experience is silly.

Although obviously material conditions have an impact on people, people react to them in different ways, and different cultures go through different phases in different orders in different manners, and are not moving towards any single goal.

Why you wasting your time arguing with a Marxist?

[Novus America]

“declining rate of profit”
That whole thing only really applies to things with no significant barriers to entry, that are fungible, not scalable, no real brand loyalty or switching costs, like taxis. Plus the result is things like Taxi medallions not global revolution creating a utopia.

“increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism - have been so strikingly confirmed by history”

Umm except the revolutionary attempts to overthrow “capitalism” (the idea that it is a single thing is pretty silly) actually reached their height around 1918. And declined greatly in several periods. Because they are not at an all time high, not on a generally upward trend over the entire period since him, and have significantly declined in several times and in several places, and never really been much a force in many places, then we have falsified that.

I mean we can say a meteor probably will strike because one has struck before and we know meteors can strike.

But the main conclusion of Marxism is more like the Book of Revelations being falsifiable.
Because Marxian communism has never been achieved. Because a revolution that tries to ban private property does not achieve it.

Besides the fact Hegelian theory is silly (history is not moving towards some universal and final end point beyond perhaps the universe collapsing) the whole idea that we can create a universal theory for the whole human experience is silly.

Although obviously material conditions have an impact on people, people react to them in different ways, and different cultures go through different phases in different orders in different manners, and are not moving towards any single goal.

Why you wasting your time arguing with a Marxist?

Fair point. It is like arguing religion. It is pointless. So I should stop now.

[Kubra]

Also gonna put out there, "primitive communism" was an altogether late development in Marx's thought, simply because it was later on he and Engels got into the just developing field of anthropology.
Also, "late stage capitalism" is something developed after Marx.

It is still part of Marxism.
And although the exact term “late stage capitalism” came after, Marx still though the Victorian era was when capitalism should end because it could not go much further.

Of course that was wrong.

But the whole Hegelian thing plus materialism is bunk.

Marxism ain't science, like with any systems of political thought there's a lot of room to maneuver.

[Fahran]

Marxism ain't science, like with any systems of political thought there's a lot of room to maneuver.

One would think educated people could see the writing on the walls. At some point, we move from good faith analysis and theorizing based on empirical evidence to brazen rationalization because we want to arrive at a particular conclusion regardless of the errors in facts and problems of paradigm. There's still a bit to be gleaned from Marxist thought and strands of thought inspired by it, but any notion that history is moving towards a global proletarian revolution, at any point, is baseless. This is a problem Marxists were confronting at early as the 1920's and 1930's.

[Totally Not OEP]

They may enjoy the verbal spars but I recognize you for what you are and I realize debate is largely pointless.

I saw what was happening when that person was joined by others, and I bowed out.

I look foreward to joining the Neo-Freikorps.

[Crysuko]

I saw what was happening when that person was joined by others, and I bowed out.

I look foreward to joining the Neo-Freikorps.

Not even. The brownshirts are more likely at this point.

[Fahran]

Not even. The brownshirts are more likely at this point.

Better idea. Let's go full tradcon.

[Crysuko]

Not even. The brownshirts are more likely at this point.

Better idea. Let's go full tradcon.

Lol, I'd be the devil to them

[Totally Not OEP]

Not even. The brownshirts are more likely at this point.

Better idea. Let's go full tradcon.

What does this even mean? How would it be enforced?

[Fahran]

Lol, I'd be the devil to them

Nonsense. We're just going to have to socialize you to enjoy the wholesome things you presently spurn. We'll get you to settle down with a spouse, have or adopt three to five children, attend religious service at least once a week, and take up a wholesome hobby such as carpentry, welding, or botany. Of course, there's no obligation to commit to society or its institutions and traditions. We provide an alternative. A one way trip on the Polar Express. :^)

What does this even mean? How would it be enforced?

The same way neoliberalism and social progressivism are presently enforced. Cultural hegemony, extreme and unrelenting social censure, and the specter of state force.

[Crysuko]

Lol, I'd be the devil to them

Nonsense. We're just going to have to socialize you to enjoy the wholesome things you presently spurn. We'll get you to settle down with a spouse, have or adopt three to five children, attend religious service at least once a week, and take up a wholesome hobby such as carpentry, welding, or botany. Of course, there's no obligation to commit to society or its institutions and traditions. We provide an alternative. A one way trip on the Polar Express. :^)

What does this even mean? How would it be enforced?

The same way neoliberalism and social progressivism are presently enforced. Cultural hegemony, extreme and unrelenting social censure, and the specter of state force.

I've given up on being in a traditional relationship after being burned on it a dozen times, I'm sterile from vasectomy, all juice and no seed :^), I'm aggressively atheist, the only church the enlightens is a burning one, I consume mind altering substances and build PCs in my spare time, despite my job being one as a hardware technician.

Hm. This might not work.

[Totally Not OEP]

The same way neoliberalism and social progressivism are presently enforced. Cultural hegemony, extreme and unrelenting social censure, and the specter of state force.

At a certain point, you realize the Authoritarian Rightism I espouse is exactly that.

[Crysuko]

The same way neoliberalism and social progressivism are presently enforced. Cultural hegemony, extreme and unrelenting social censure, and the specter of state force.

At a certain point, you realize the Authoritarian Rightism I espouse is exactly that.

You may also begin to understand my opposition to such ideas.

[Fahran]

Hm. This might not work.

Looks like we have to send you to the coldest reaches of Upper Canada to live with the gnomes and possibly the Inuits that Canada didn't genocide and maybe some polar bears.

[Crysuko]

Hm. This might not work.

Looks like we have to send you to the coldest reaches of Upper Canada to live with the gnomes and possibly the Inuits that Canada didn't genocide and maybe some polar bears.

I doubt you'd fair much better in a LibSoc society

[Kubra]

Marxism ain't science, like with any systems of political thought there's a lot of room to maneuver.

One would think educated people could see the writing on the walls. At some point, we move from good faith analysis and theorizing based on empirical evidence to brazen rationalization because we want to arrive at a particular conclusion regardless of the errors in facts and problems of paradigm. There's still a bit to be gleaned from Marxist thought and strands of thought inspired by it, but any notion that history is moving towards a global proletarian revolution, at any point, is baseless. This is a problem Marxists were confronting at early as the 1920's and 1930's.

Which is, of course, why everyone had their own pet marxist theory of immanent revolution. "Late stage capitalism", a Mandelian invention, is merely its most popular iteration, owing to the guy getting to write the Penguin intro's for capital and Verso getting publishing rights to his stuff.

[Fahran]

I doubt you'd fair much better in a LibSoc society

A lot of the worst effects of such a society have already begun to manifest themselves under neoliberalism through forces of creative destruction. I do not fear so much for myself in these conditions as I fear for the future of the way of life I got to enjoy. People will become more akin to cogs in the great industrial machine because the concern of both neoliberals and the majority of the LibSocs we now encounter are principally material and labor-related. Alienation has begun to creep into the human psyche and higher wages will not alleviate such traumas and listlessness. We need a degree of nationalism, religosity, or traditionalism to retrieve what has been lost.

[Pyrghium]

I doubt you'd fair much better in a LibSoc society

A lot of the worst effects of such a society have already begun to manifest themselves under neoliberalism through forces of creative destruction. I do not fear so much for myself in these conditions as I fear for the future of the way of life I got to enjoy. People will become more akin to cogs in the great industrial machine because the concern of both neoliberals and the majority of the LibSocs we now encounter are principally material and labor-related. Alienation has begun to creep into the human psyche and higher wages will not alleviate such traumas and listlessness. We need a degree of nationalism, religosity, or traditionalism to retrieve what has been lost.

I assure you, those things will return when the status quo reaches its bitter end. We are nearer to it than it seems.