I know "dogmatism" is definitely loaded towards the negative here but that's really the only way I can think to refer to it.

For a specific example, the idea of shutting down and avoiding all criticism of America's geopolitical enemies. I certainly understand where people are coming from with this, and how even leftists aren't immune to state propaganda, but at the same time I have to fall on the "dogmatism is always bad" side. To me it seems like even within a warped and propagandized discourse, shutting down any line of thought uncritically is both a bad general practice and an ineffective way of opposing that line of thought.

    • howdyoudoo [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      you say that but everything ultimately comes down to numbers and material. ideology is the same.

      big banks can create as many fancy convoluted "credit default derivatives" and 2nd order hiding mechanisms as they want but the only thing that matters is that line go up = more money

      dogma of opinion = opinion is stronger

      You can try to rationalize it away, but you'd just be doing the same thing as a wall street banker, just with ideology instead of currency.

      reality is reductive, it's just about energy and material. Rich people steal energy and material from poor people. That's all

    • howdyoudoo [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The analogy of "being critical to China" for a leftist would be sort of like "giving away free money" for an investor

      "giving free money" is sometimes good in small amounts if you're so big and powerful that public sentiment is worth a few wasted dollars.

      giving free money is very BAD if your public sentiment doesn't matter. Which is the case for 99% of people who ever existed, because most people are so small and unknown that they have no public sentiment.

      IMO marxism-leninism's following in the west is so small that it's not even worth doing this, and I view our current status as analogous to a company that is basically unknown outside of a tiny locale

      • PaulWall [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        i feel like this analogy and analysis is lacking structure and clarity. it reads like obscure metaphysics

        there might be something there, but i can’t quite parse it