its like certain Nazis supporting Palestine because they hate Jews. It makes leftists who support Palestine for its apartheid policies look like anti-Semites.
At the core, nobody's ideology supercedes their material interest. I think that's one thing the left needs to communicate better, and we could do so by intentionally conflating material interest and selfishness. We concede that humans are selfish by nature. Yep, each and every one of us is just following our own self-interest. You got us. Now let's discuss how to do that rationally.
Then we point to an example like this - this is the CIA acting in its own rational self-interest regardless of supposed ideological goals. First there were individuals whose rational self-interests clashed with the superstructure - gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people, and anyone else who falls under what we now call the queer umbrella. These individuals could do nothing on their own to fight back against the collective power of the state, and so they had to come together to form larger units based on a shared rational self-interest. Together they won some basic level of rights and acceptance for a certain subset of the gay and lesbian population. Some members of this group stopped there and enjoyed a comfortable life as second-class citizens by siding with those in power, but others used their newly-won power to support those whose own rational self-interests were directly tied to their own. Those who sided with reactionary elements are now seeing their own power eroded by those very same elements.
Zooming out, we see anti-US countries struggling with this issue due to the same reactionary cultural elements we see at home. The state must grant ideological concessions in order to oppose another state with clashing material interests despite the shared ideology of these two states. By increasingly broadening their interests to include those whose interests are tied to their own, LGBTQ people as a collective have forced the state's hand. And when you move backward in history, you can see that this was only made possible by the liberatory movements that came before them. That's how to effect change. That is the power we hold when we are selfish together.
I think sometimes people just have trouble seeing the whole story. The individual doesn't get lost - on the contrary, their power only grows.
There is also the fact that trans and queer rights isn't actually a threat to or bad for capital so the material interests of the groups the CIA represents can comfortably not give a shit about the issue
The hard part is choosing what messaging you can get across before you lose their interest and I think I already overextended myself... but that is an extremely important piece of the puzzle. Maybe if people are willing to engage with the first topic, you switch over to the example of civil rights and black liberation, and then you can tie it back together by pointing out the disparity in how these overlapping groups are treated based on how much they threaten the material interest of the state.
And from there, it's a short hop to "the state is the enforcement arm of those money hungry elites. They use token rewards and cheap ideological rhetoric to incentivize politically useful groups - Ivy Leaguer types and your manager - to align with them, but when their interests are directly threatened they won't hesitate to use violence. In fact, their interests don't even have to be threatened by your particular group to make it a target if the cost of using violence is outweighed by the gains."
There is no fixed human nature. Humans are socialized into selfishness by capitalism. Humans are social creatures "by nature" if anything but because we are sapient we are not "naturally" anything.
For selflessness or selfishness to exist as concepts, there must be an understanding of where the self stops and where the other begins, and every self-aware being first draws this distinction when the thing in that being that has desires - the self - is blocked from meeting its desires by a different thing - the other. As soon as there is something that you want that you can't get, you are confronted with two options: submit to the other or overcome it.
This isn't human nature, it's all of nature. Atoms steal electrons from each other until they figure out how to share. Once they've formed chemical bonds and reached stability - resolving the contradiction of the other and the self - they form molecules. When those molecules spontaneously organize into a form that allows for self-reproduction like RNA, a new contradiction arises: the energy supply begins to dwindle as the population increases. These two complex molecules - copies of the original in every way except for tiny, imperceptible differences - are then forced to recognize the other and they are locked into a cycle of violence until one submits or they reach a compromise. The contradiction doesn't truly resolve, however, until they have recognized one another as equals, which sets the stage for life to organizes into increasingly complex and specialized forms. It goes on all the way to us.
When a higher form cannot learn to meet its needs, it eventually breaks back down into its constituting parts - the individual needs of each component begin to take precedence and old contradictions rise back to the surface. If you look all the way back to the beginning, this means that the stuff that eventually became us is the same stuff that ultimately found a way to cooperate. We are here thanks to those first carbon molecules that decided to recognize the self in the other in order to more efficiently meet their own desires. To retain your sense of self, working with others instead of against them is ultimately the only rational path forward.
Let go of bourgeoisie morality. Take as much as you can from those who have more than they've labored for and convince anyone with less to do the same. Communism is just the natural conclusion of class consciousness, the becoming of a greater form of self, and class consciousness is only possible when we can identify where our interests lie and who is preventing us from attaining them. Desire is imperative to the communist project. If I have to reframe the concept of selfishness a bit to get us there, that is something I'm more than willing to do.
How is 'Cooperation is good and humans can and should do it' "bourgeois morality"? Its literally the opposite? The bourgeoise want us fighting for scraps right? Or am I misunderstanding you because i'm not going to lie I couldnt really parse this post.
Like idk I'm sorry but "humans are not naturally selfish, thats a bourgeoise lie and a result of capitalist socialization" was one of the first messages that brought me over to being a communist so I'm against dismantling it because it worked so well for me. It seems like good messaging.
I'm very baby brained though so maybe there's some higher order shit I dont understand going on because again, I literally did not understand your post here lol.
Actually, let me get a redo - I think I can do better than that last one. You don't even have to read this if you don't want to but I'm enjoying trying to explain my thoughts on this in a way that makes sense to a fellow autistic person:
Engaging in selfishness alone is a high risk behavior. When you exploit the fellow members of your tribe, you risk ostracization for minimal reward. Selfishness occurs in all species to varying degrees, but this explains why ruthless selfishness is not a common trait in the most evolutionarily successful species.
Let's say you're in an early modern human tribe. While engaging in selfish behavior alone is risky, engaging in selfishness as a group reduces that risk - every person you add to your group decreases the risk of ostracization or retaliation and reduces the numbers that could oppose you. There is less reward, though, unless:
A.) You come to dominate the group, and the rest of the tribe returns to its initial state with a little less resources to go around,
or
B.) You work together with the group to take more
reward than you were previously taking. The risk increases the more you take, but it is still lower by nature of the power in your group's growing numbers.
Option A leads to the cycle repeating on a smaller scale within the selfish group while simultaneously encouraging the emergence of new selfish groups to compete with. That leads us to our present point in human history. Power struggles within power struggles within power struggles.
Option B leads to two possibilities:
B1.) A return to the original state as the roles of the groups come to be reversed, exploiter becoming exploited, leading us again to the cycle repeating.
Some people will switch groups, slightly altering the way this dynamic plays out. Ultimately the most ruthless still come to dominate unless we reach...
B2.) A return to our initial state of total equality with the newfound tools born from generations of struggle resulting from the conflict of the self and the other.
And so history ping-pongs back and forth, briefly fractalizing as empires rise and fall, until we arive at option B2, communism.
Awesome! I've only really tried to talk about this stuff with my neurotypical family so it's nice to be able to lay it out like it is in my mind.
I ultimately agree with you on the liberatory power of altruism, but I guess my main premise is that it might be easier to find a framework that transforms self-directed behavior into collective action than to actually convince people that they should be less selfish. The people who think like we do are probably already on our side to the degree that they feel materially safe to side with us.
Sorry, I'm just exploring these concepts myself so I'm getting a little caught up in my own thoughts here as I write.
What I'm getting at is that selfishness is just a word. The thing it describes is acting on your desires at the expense of another, exploitation. Exploitation is a necessary part of survival until you've reached a higher form - homeostasis, stability, a collective of individuals acting in total voluntary cooperation and guided by a shared sense of purpose.
But until then, you have to exploit someone to survive. Try to work with people who share your material interests - the proletariat - to ensure you're exploiting the right others - the bourgeoisie - until there are no others, just one us. That is our sole imperative as communists. And while "selfishness" is a crude way to define all of this, it is a lot easier to convince someone to reframe the way they view their self-interest than it is to convince them to act against it.
If someone believes their self-interest lies with a particular ideology, the first step isn't to argue about whether they should follow their self-interest - that will only trigger defensive behavior. You need to convince them that their self-interest can better be served with a different ideology. Once you've got them on Marxism then you can do the hard work of educating them, but you need to get them on the hook first.
And I apologize for writing another essay. I'm working on getting this more concise.
If you really want to double down on the idea that attempting to apply basic dialectical analysis is lib shit then be my guest, but it might be easier to just admit that you reacted without actually reading what I had to say.
its like certain Nazis supporting Palestine because they hate Jews. It makes leftists who support Palestine for its apartheid policies look like anti-Semites.
At the core, nobody's ideology supercedes their material interest. I think that's one thing the left needs to communicate better, and we could do so by intentionally conflating material interest and selfishness. We concede that humans are selfish by nature. Yep, each and every one of us is just following our own self-interest. You got us. Now let's discuss how to do that rationally.
Then we point to an example like this - this is the CIA acting in its own rational self-interest regardless of supposed ideological goals. First there were individuals whose rational self-interests clashed with the superstructure - gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered people, and anyone else who falls under what we now call the queer umbrella. These individuals could do nothing on their own to fight back against the collective power of the state, and so they had to come together to form larger units based on a shared rational self-interest. Together they won some basic level of rights and acceptance for a certain subset of the gay and lesbian population. Some members of this group stopped there and enjoyed a comfortable life as second-class citizens by siding with those in power, but others used their newly-won power to support those whose own rational self-interests were directly tied to their own. Those who sided with reactionary elements are now seeing their own power eroded by those very same elements.
Zooming out, we see anti-US countries struggling with this issue due to the same reactionary cultural elements we see at home. The state must grant ideological concessions in order to oppose another state with clashing material interests despite the shared ideology of these two states. By increasingly broadening their interests to include those whose interests are tied to their own, LGBTQ people as a collective have forced the state's hand. And when you move backward in history, you can see that this was only made possible by the liberatory movements that came before them. That's how to effect change. That is the power we hold when we are selfish together.
I think sometimes people just have trouble seeing the whole story. The individual doesn't get lost - on the contrary, their power only grows.
There is also the fact that trans and queer rights isn't actually a threat to or bad for capital so the material interests of the groups the CIA represents can comfortably not give a shit about the issue
The hard part is choosing what messaging you can get across before you lose their interest and I think I already overextended myself... but that is an extremely important piece of the puzzle. Maybe if people are willing to engage with the first topic, you switch over to the example of civil rights and black liberation, and then you can tie it back together by pointing out the disparity in how these overlapping groups are treated based on how much they threaten the material interest of the state.
And from there, it's a short hop to "the state is the enforcement arm of those money hungry elites. They use token rewards and cheap ideological rhetoric to incentivize politically useful groups - Ivy Leaguer types and your manager - to align with them, but when their interests are directly threatened they won't hesitate to use violence. In fact, their interests don't even have to be threatened by your particular group to make it a target if the cost of using violence is outweighed by the gains."
There is no fixed human nature. Humans are socialized into selfishness by capitalism. Humans are social creatures "by nature" if anything but because we are sapient we are not "naturally" anything.
For selflessness or selfishness to exist as concepts, there must be an understanding of where the self stops and where the other begins, and every self-aware being first draws this distinction when the thing in that being that has desires - the self - is blocked from meeting its desires by a different thing - the other. As soon as there is something that you want that you can't get, you are confronted with two options: submit to the other or overcome it.
This isn't human nature, it's all of nature. Atoms steal electrons from each other until they figure out how to share. Once they've formed chemical bonds and reached stability - resolving the contradiction of the other and the self - they form molecules. When those molecules spontaneously organize into a form that allows for self-reproduction like RNA, a new contradiction arises: the energy supply begins to dwindle as the population increases. These two complex molecules - copies of the original in every way except for tiny, imperceptible differences - are then forced to recognize the other and they are locked into a cycle of violence until one submits or they reach a compromise. The contradiction doesn't truly resolve, however, until they have recognized one another as equals, which sets the stage for life to organizes into increasingly complex and specialized forms. It goes on all the way to us.
When a higher form cannot learn to meet its needs, it eventually breaks back down into its constituting parts - the individual needs of each component begin to take precedence and old contradictions rise back to the surface. If you look all the way back to the beginning, this means that the stuff that eventually became us is the same stuff that ultimately found a way to cooperate. We are here thanks to those first carbon molecules that decided to recognize the self in the other in order to more efficiently meet their own desires. To retain your sense of self, working with others instead of against them is ultimately the only rational path forward.
Let go of bourgeoisie morality. Take as much as you can from those who have more than they've labored for and convince anyone with less to do the same. Communism is just the natural conclusion of class consciousness, the becoming of a greater form of self, and class consciousness is only possible when we can identify where our interests lie and who is preventing us from attaining them. Desire is imperative to the communist project. If I have to reframe the concept of selfishness a bit to get us there, that is something I'm more than willing to do.
How is 'Cooperation is good and humans can and should do it' "bourgeois morality"? Its literally the opposite? The bourgeoise want us fighting for scraps right? Or am I misunderstanding you because i'm not going to lie I couldnt really parse this post.
Like idk I'm sorry but "humans are not naturally selfish, thats a bourgeoise lie and a result of capitalist socialization" was one of the first messages that brought me over to being a communist so I'm against dismantling it because it worked so well for me. It seems like good messaging.
I'm very baby brained though so maybe there's some higher order shit I dont understand going on because again, I literally did not understand your post here lol.
Actually, let me get a redo - I think I can do better than that last one. You don't even have to read this if you don't want to but I'm enjoying trying to explain my thoughts on this in a way that makes sense to a fellow autistic person:
Engaging in selfishness alone is a high risk behavior. When you exploit the fellow members of your tribe, you risk ostracization for minimal reward. Selfishness occurs in all species to varying degrees, but this explains why ruthless selfishness is not a common trait in the most evolutionarily successful species.
Let's say you're in an early modern human tribe. While engaging in selfish behavior alone is risky, engaging in selfishness as a group reduces that risk - every person you add to your group decreases the risk of ostracization or retaliation and reduces the numbers that could oppose you. There is less reward, though, unless:
or
Option A leads to the cycle repeating on a smaller scale within the selfish group while simultaneously encouraging the emergence of new selfish groups to compete with. That leads us to our present point in human history. Power struggles within power struggles within power struggles.
Option B leads to two possibilities:
Some people will switch groups, slightly altering the way this dynamic plays out. Ultimately the most ruthless still come to dominate unless we reach...
And so history ping-pongs back and forth, briefly fractalizing as empires rise and fall, until we arive at option B2, communism.
That makes more sense to me.
Awesome! I've only really tried to talk about this stuff with my neurotypical family so it's nice to be able to lay it out like it is in my mind.
I ultimately agree with you on the liberatory power of altruism, but I guess my main premise is that it might be easier to find a framework that transforms self-directed behavior into collective action than to actually convince people that they should be less selfish. The people who think like we do are probably already on our side to the degree that they feel materially safe to side with us.
Sorry, I'm just exploring these concepts myself so I'm getting a little caught up in my own thoughts here as I write.
What I'm getting at is that selfishness is just a word. The thing it describes is acting on your desires at the expense of another, exploitation. Exploitation is a necessary part of survival until you've reached a higher form - homeostasis, stability, a collective of individuals acting in total voluntary cooperation and guided by a shared sense of purpose.
But until then, you have to exploit someone to survive. Try to work with people who share your material interests - the proletariat - to ensure you're exploiting the right others - the bourgeoisie - until there are no others, just one us. That is our sole imperative as communists. And while "selfishness" is a crude way to define all of this, it is a lot easier to convince someone to reframe the way they view their self-interest than it is to convince them to act against it.
If someone believes their self-interest lies with a particular ideology, the first step isn't to argue about whether they should follow their self-interest - that will only trigger defensive behavior. You need to convince them that their self-interest can better be served with a different ideology. Once you've got them on Marxism then you can do the hard work of educating them, but you need to get them on the hook first.
And I apologize for writing another essay. I'm working on getting this more concise.
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People believe in human nature because of the illusions presented by society such as every "man for himself" or tricking your body into pleasures
My entire thesis is pretty much lifted straight from Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic but okay, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.
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If you really want to double down on the idea that attempting to apply basic dialectical analysis is lib shit then be my guest, but it might be easier to just admit that you reacted without actually reading what I had to say.