commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]

  • 3 Posts
  • 831 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very "apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system." Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they're not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.

    This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.


  • Ready for taking some heat, but I think engineers are actually a great example of a group of people that learns how systems work but often never think to apply this thinking to social questions. Rationality of engineering is very "apply advanced concept to concrete example and understand how limitations (conditions) and accuracy affect the system." Which is beautiful and awesome. Just that the people who study it are often freaks who love bombs. And if they're not, they still just cannot grasp the social question.

    This is to say, I must defend engineers to an extent, but reeducation is likely a fine option because they mostly have all the bases to understand.



  • When the contradictions grow and sharpen, there is a dialectical process where the positions then become clear afterwards, and one of those positions sincec Stalin has, up until this point, always been the consensus "ML" position. Right now, there is broad agreement on many positions. I think China is the main one currently, where some ML are saying that it's not going fast enough. But ML still means something clear in this situation, just something with a growing contradiction (like everything else).

    ML is a term which Stalin used to describe Lenin's additions. Of course that's how Stalin described it, not how Trotsky wanted people to understand it. That contradiction built up very quickly and made a split, and Trotsky dropped the term and so it's meaning was no longer split. But again, it's just a label. You are just opposed to ML and then feel like it shouldn't be called that because you disagree with it but feel like you still agree with Marx and maybe Lenin.

    If it sounds like I had an attidude, I had no intention for that. I was actually paraphrasing a famous speech of Parenti.

    If you want to be an island with your own terms, I do have a problem with that. It is a 'we' because you are using language and it's meaningless to create your own language for only yourself. You confuse the terms tin relation to each othergenerally as it exists in a social context and language. That's why there needs to be a good reason that a person takes such an action, and they must be clear in that. I don't think you did either of those.


  • In every one of those cases, the "minority" position group eventually named themselves something else. Left-opp called themselves leninists and then trotskyists (if they were that particular flavor or left opp). Left deviationists of late Mao eventually settled at MLM to distinguish between the majority opinion there of ML (ML MZT if you want to get fancy, but not necessary because it isn't distinguished from ML in any real scenario relevant to today).

    Other nations had different approaches but agree that they are currently ML with differences in conditions and therefore differences in concrete tactics.

    But regardless, you are changing a word unecessarily. Everyone who knows anything about it knows what one means with ML. What purpose is there to changing the label for something concrete and existing to which it refers? Call it a Camel for all I care, as long as we know we're referring to the foundation of historical materialism applied to material conditions, it doesn't matter. So changing it should have some benefit, which I'm not convinced exists.



  • '"do your own Marxist analysis" then read Marxists? My question is, why would I do that instead of reading and critiquing Marxist analyses? Not everyone has to reinvent every wheel. I can look critically, it's not like this is my first Marxist analysis. I'm gonna read and put more trust in the PFLP than anyone on Palestine, too.

    If there is no good analysis, then of course. That's the information I hoped someone would give: is there a good analysis somewhere? I'd rather learn and apply than have to create my own position on Sudan. It's the purpose of parties really. But no party I affiliate with has said anything, and maybe, as you insinuate, there is no good analysis.

    I'll read some on socialist Sudan; I know little outside of what I already mentioned and the writings of the Communist Party of Kenya. You seem to disagree with them, if I'm understanding right.




  • What's the point of having a group of like-minded people except to not learn everything on your own? Maybe my question is not worded well, and I will also take your critique seriously, in that I should investigate further.

    But why would I begin by nothing? This is my first real moment of thinking I maybe have some time to learn something about it. I'm going to begin with a basis among comrades, look for resources from communists (and look, another comrade gave that knowledge about a communist party, though I will have to search further on my own).

    Maybe it does show some "white leftist" attitude that I should critique, but don't act like there's not enough that I've been trying to learn and apply these past years. I didn't want a fully digested take, I wanted to know what Marxists has said about the positions.