Why dont this "leftists" go ask Pol Pot what happens when you dont read theory?
Truthfully, all you need to be left is have the belief that everyone is owed a dignified life, and have indignant fury for every injustice.
All theory is just some expansion upon these things.
That's all you need to be on the left, but to have opinions and ideas worth taking seriously by others on the left you do kinda need to actually read and study theory before opening your mouth.
"Healthcare pls" isn't an ideological framework.
Don't get me wrong - I absolutely advocate reading theory. My intent here is merely to outline that clearly shoeonhead doesn't give a fuck about other people, or else she wouldn't feel so strongly about justifying her shitty opinions.
What if instead of Pol Pot, it was Pol Potter, and he was a slytherin?
I’d like to take a moment and point out this is the only “theory” I have read.
Back in the day working people wore auto-didactic self-education as a point of pride
Nowadays its treated as a performative joke because our attention spans have been engineered out of us by instant gratification hyper-consumerism.
No, they don't have a point by merely pointing out the obvious truth that's it's much, much easier to just tell outrageous lies (especially in simplified meme form) than to produce elaborate and coherent explanations of complex historical processes
One of the best aspects of the left is it's culture of encouraging self education. Some people choose to understand this encouragement of reading as harassment of those who do not read, mostly because their brains have been poisoned by hyper argumentative social media.
The funny thing is, she is right in that even reading 500 communist thinkers isn't enough, to fully understand leftism in context one needs to have a wide understanding of philosophy, politics, sociology and more. Just reading communist thinkers won't cut it.
I feel like I have read all I need to have read and can adequately explain the point of radical leftism and I've read less than 1000 pages of theory, but I have also listened to a lot of material and engaged in a lot of conversation so :shrug-outta-hecks:
You only have to read as much as you want, reading isn't a requirement to be a leftist, nobody sane thinks that. It's just that reading is encouraged in leftism, which is as I've said, a good thing.
The problem is, in my view, reading only radical leftist texts leaves you ignorant of the flaws of leftist theory, it means you are essentially just indoctrinating yourself rather than actually engaging with the topics the text is about.
And if leftists only read leftist texts, leftist theory does not improve, it stagnates because it does not answer or even understand the criticism towards it, and instead dismisses it for being bourgeois.
Now I obviously don't expect the average person to write 500 word long academic books and invent completly new leftist concepts, but I do think a leftist community (commune, party, whatever suits you) that is critical of itself is the key to a leftist community that prevails.
The problem is, in my view, reading only radical leftist texts leaves you ignorant of the flaws of leftist theory,
This presupposes that there isn't endless and often vicious criticism of leftist texts within the left which as we all know is not really the case.
It's leftist criticism from a leftist perspective, which is fine, but you are still ignoring 90% of criticism made. And besides, forget criticism and advancement of theory, without reading non-leftist figures, you can't even fully understand the current leftist theory in the first place, as a lot of it draws from non-leftist philosophy.
but you are still ignoring 90% of criticism made.
At least 90% of that 90% is not constructive, that's the thing. When someone doesn't share your goals whatsoever and has a completely different value system and perception of how things work and should work, they're gonna produce loads and loads of critique but it won't contain anything of much value to you, it's mostly just gonna be stuff you have to debunk or ignore. For instance, if you try to read Austrian school critiques of marxian economics or whatever it's mostly just nonsense about obsessively trying to destroy, say, the labor theory of value or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (both of which are questions which have been argued a lot about by leftist economists and even marxist economists but with far more nuance) with facts and logic because they imagined that if they manage that then that's just the Achilles heel and if you "debunk" these two marxism will just implode, or just completely missing the point and complaining that it's not good for running the kind of system they want to create. Even the stuff they do end up offering half decent critiques to are stuff that you could have found someone else make a case for, but less stupid.
This... I'm sorry to say this is nothing but dogma, reading nothing but those you already agree with is dogma at it's purest. You are presupposing that leftism is correct, and then dismissing all non-leftist criticisms of it. Yes, different people have different values, the whole point of the dialectic is that we should still engage with these people and aim to understand where exactly our worldviews diverge and why they diverge. Simply saying "we have different values and can never understand each other" isn't enough.
You say that most of the criticism towards leftism is not constructive, which may be true just because of how much trash is being pumped out, but that doesn't mean a lot of valid criticism isn't being made. I think that the "postmodern" criticism of Marxism (that Marxism is simply another Christianity influenced European philosophy that fall for the grand narrative trap) for example is very strong, let's not forget all arguments based on psychology (as cliche as it is, Communism doesn't work because of human nature is a legitimate argument that needs to be had). And the example you gave was of the Austrian economists, which is an unfair example as they are a fairly fringe group relative to the rest of economic thought.
And once again, forget criticism, how are you planning on understanding leftism if you have never read any of the thinkers that it is based on?
Anyways, I think there seems to be a core disagreement in our worldviews and how we view the world, I don't believe that simply knowing political philosophy is enough, I think that ethical philosophy is also very important if you want to do any politics, and if you are someone who for example believes in dialectical materialism, then you should also need to be educated in metaphysics, so that you can defend your beliefs or outgrow them. What I'm trying to get to is, good luck studying all that while reading only leftists.
The psychological angle isn't that people randomly kill each other(?), and equating pre-agricultural human societies with industrial ones is a big mistake, just because primitive communism existed in small tribes doesn't mean fully industrialized communism can exist in a world with billions of people.
I ofcourse agree with you, I don't agree with their arguments, but we can't just ignore them and act like it's all "pseudoscience" especially when most of us aren't experts on the topic.
You just edited your comment to include the criticism of postmodernism, the grand narrative thing isn't a stretch imo, infact I actually agree with the postmodernists on that one. And simply saying "it doesn't matter all I care about worker's emancipation" isn't a very wise take if you are aiming to use Marxism to emancipate workers. Because if postmodernism is true, Marxism (in it's traditional form) is false.
Sorry, I was sleeping, but, "Postmodernism" doesn't reject material reality existing(?) I don't really know what you're talking about. In fact "Postmodernism" isn't really a coherent ideology at all, all it is a rejection of grand narratives, which is something most people believe in.
Anyways I don't really want to restart this argument.
Postmodernism couldn't be true by its own standards precisely because it rejects narratives of truth. Calling postmodernism true would be precisely nonsensical
reading nothing but those you already agree with is dogma at it’s purest.
But again you presuppose that you agree with all these people which is really not the case.
And the example you gave was of the Austrian economists, which is an unfair example as they are a fairly fringe group relative to the rest of economic thought.
It's not so true any more. Neoclassical economics are very close to the Austrian school these days.
What I’m trying to get to is, good luck studying all that while reading only leftists.
I didn't say that. I said that it's not a good point to say that it would mean you don't read criticsm as if there isn't tons of criticism within the left. Also that most CRITICISM of the left (not most things that are said in general) outside the left is really not constructive at all.
The funny thing is, she is right in that even reading 500 communist thinkers isn’t enough, to fully understand leftism in context one needs to have a wide understanding of philosophy, politics, sociology and more. Just reading communist thinkers won’t cut it.
pass
I'll just stick with the principals of communism
i'm not going to be a theorist or whateverThat's fine! You don't have to read it, it would be good if you did, but you aren't less of a leftist if you don't.
That's perfectly ok, you don't need any theory to just "be" on the left or support other leftist endeavours, its when you start putting forward opinions, ideas and critiques that a theoretical framework becomes necessary to actually legitimize your position on the left.
Is Shoe that Boxxy look alike asshole that use to be part of the whole "anti-sjw political correctness, I should be allowed to say the n-word" crowd? Wasn't she like super shitty and reactionary? What changed? Why do I see left-leaning people always following/re-posting her now? Especially with dog shit takes like this, she still seems plenty reactionary and stupid to me
She was a gamergate reactionary and then found Bernie Sanders and now she’s a social democrat with much of the same cultural grievance.
Shoe is a weird one. Her whole anti-sjw phase was years ago, and I'm pretty sure quite a few people on here had those, too. She grew out of it I suppose lol.
Nowadays she's pretty much Bernie levels of left, but she's really online-poisoned. Often feels like politics for her (and many others) is about being against what the other side is doing rather than having any actual goals. Her videos have the same tone they always had, except instead of cynically cracking jokes about sjws and political correctness, it's about capitalist america ("hellworld") and anti-sjws.
She's also great buddies with V**sh and when you look at her replies, she still has a conservative following (although it's definitely outnumbered by left-leaning libs).
My impression is that she has the right idea about what's wrong with society (escalating wealth inequality, systemic oppression etc) but she like... doesn't really care too much whether or not something is done about it? She seems content tweeting and making videos.
So like, she's definitely not "good" now, but no doubt it's great to have someone with her platform (and her audience) spout vaguely left-wing, anti-capitalist ideas. Lots of left-wing youtubers are overly wordy and thorough, so someone whose videos are just like "man, aren't these capitalists cringe? lmao jeff bezos will be a trillionaire we live in hell lmaooooo" are good to reach the apolitical gamer crowd.
I mean, the people on her probably didn't make a living from spreading the bigotry of their anti-sjw phase and then danced around that elephant in the room for years to come while still having a ton of shady fucking takes.
@RNAi posts boatloads of memes and that comrade is more powerful than any groyper loser on the right.
But I've never read any theory,
Is that shoeonhead complaining about leftists not falling for their grift? I mean I think I remember they being cancelled or something for posting or doing some shit
Anyways, given the societies we grew up in, you are conservative/a shithead by default and then you start de-shitting yourself.
But I’ve never read any theory,
That's the source of your power! I think she used to be on the right then she did a turn to pandering to progressives. idk I'm not on twitter.
She isn't wrong in the since American's just won't read. Hell, I hardly read.
I mean conservatives eat each other all the time, including her for dating a black guy.
Yooo remember lauren southern when the chuds found out she dated a black person?
This was sometime earlier in the 2010's. I remember reading about it on ED
I don't think you have to read "theory" (they're just books, people!), nor does it innately make you a better communist or whatever, but on the other hand it would be kinda weird to identify as a Melvillist🐋 and never have read Moby-Dick.
