site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29315 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.

California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.

It all adds up.

2nd comment because I had another thought:

A lot of it probably has to do with conservatives making Marxism sound super cool and awesome for the last 3-4 decades?

Like, if Marxism actually meant, in the public imagination, 'Stalin and Mao and nothing else', it would probably still be unpopular.

But conservatives have applied the label to everything from every attempt the government makes to help people (that includes spending money) to every attempt by workers to organize or otherwise improve their bargaining power relative to bosses to basically every form of critical analysis and critical theory (post-modern neo-Marxism) to most of Hollywood and the entertainment industry to etc. etc. etc.

So, given that Marxism means all of that in the popular imagination, then yeah, of course people are going to like it, or at least not get universal support for virulently attacking it.

As far as I can tell, the process went something like 'Communist countries were legitimately awful and threatening -> Conservatives attacked American communists and Marxists in a reaction against those terrible nations and threats -> This worked so well that conservatives continued to call everything their political opponents did communist/Marxist as a generic smear for decades -> The next generation of their political opponents found that they were growing up in a world where everything they wanted to do and be was being called Marxist -> The next generation really likes Marxism'

Maybe the same thing will happen with racism if the left keeps using it as a generic smear against everything the right does, seems like that's already happening a little bit in places like this, between HBD and 'despite' and so forth. Of course, as other commenters have pointed out, the difference is that Marxism has a utopian vision it can rally all kinds of people around ,whereas racism is definitionally decisive and exclusionary, so no matter how much it is recontextualized it still has a limited audience. But time will tell.

Differential perception of effectiveness. Communism is perceived as a defeated force, racism is perceived as a powerful and constant cthonic threat. Left wing violence is perceived as performative or silly; right wing violence is perceived as a serious threat.

Smart take. I feel the other way around, which explains my own reactions. Thank you.

Part of the national mythos is that all Americans are mysteriously created equal. This narrative is pushed in early education and probably also pushed by our intelligence services who want a hyper-stable culture against foreign influences. But this naturally leads to a more sympathy for Marxism than racism. Racism is saying “actually, I chiefly identify as my bloodline and not as an American citizen”. Marxism is kind of just saying “all Americans must be made equal”. America, as a unified state, can survive Marxism, but it would fracture if people began to chiefly identify as their ethnicity.

Racism is saying “actually, I chiefly identify as my bloodline and not as an American citizen” I see your point, but c'mon, that's what anti-racism is now.

This narrative is pushed in early education and probably also pushed by our intelligence services who want a hyper-stable culture against foreign influences.

It doesn't need much pushing - Thomas Jefferson wrote it into the founding document of the American national mythos. Discussing who is pushing it on Americans is a bit like discussing who is pushing "Muhammed is the prophet of God" on Muslims.

Jefferson didn’t literally believe that all men were given the same endowments. Instead, I think the idea is that each men is before the law be god the same. So the idea that one may be richer than another due to differential endowments may be natural without violating the notion that all men are equal.

I know that. But what he wrote was "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal" People who teach American civics using the texts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (which is the natural and obvious way to do it) don't need to push anything for schoolchildren to think that it might be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal.

This is low effort. And I thought my last post was low effort. I probably should have listened thru the entire Tory conference instead of reading the articles and giving the quotes people are talking about, but I’m lazy.

To answer your question I always come back to the west is a Christian religion even for the atheist who still believe a lot of Christian worldviews are correct.

I'm not sure I understand. The West is a religion?

it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust

The suitable comparison would not be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings/mass deaths vs the Holocaust, it would be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings vs all ethnically/racially motivated killings/mass deaths. That's probably going to come down on the side of racism, if only because it's got a ten thousand year head start.

It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists.

This is effectively repeating the premise. Companies are de facto required to fire (overt) racists because it is more socially unacceptable to be racist. I would posit that racism has far higher salience in the US than Marxism because until about 50 years ago a third of the country was run by explicit white supremacists. The backlash against that didn't necessarily make people less racist, but it did make it socially unacceptable to be explicitly pro-racism.

The suitable comparison would not be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings/mass deaths vs the Holocaust, it would be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings vs all ethnically/racially motivated killings/mass deaths. That's probably going to come down on the side of racism, if only because it's got a ten thousand year head start.

Okay, I feel stupid now. D'oh. I guess I should've compared the Nazis and the Soviets, but you still would've broadened it to a larger scope and I'd still feel stupid, just slightly less so. Good job.

My intent was not to make you feel stupid. I do think it's fair to compare the Nazis to the Soviets, but I figured you were aiming for a broader comparison since not every racist is Hitler and not every Marxist is Stalin.

The suitable comparison would not be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings/mass deaths vs the Holocaust, it would be all marxism-related ideologically motivated killings vs all ethnically/racially motivated killings/mass deaths.

You, as you noted later, missed the qualifier ‘in the relevant time period’. There were Marxist regimes from 1920-1990, roughly, so all deaths from Marxism in that period vs all deaths from racism in that period is a harder comparison(and I think Marxism killed more people in the time period in question).

Companies are de facto required to fire (overt) racists because it is more socially unacceptable to be racist.

Not de facto, de jure. Civil Rights legislation and its applications lead to corporate liability for a hostile workplace if they elect to keep someone on staff that is racist. This is not mere culture, it is a combination of law and culture working in a feedback loop.

Communism is intuitively not terrible to the average person, because almost certainly they will have seen it, or something like it work at very small scales. Probably within their own family. You have resources coming in and in general within your direct family, those resources are allocated to who needs them not to who brought them in. I buy my kids clothes and food and toys much in excess of the economic value they produce. I give money to my brother when he is down on his luck even if I don't think he will ever be able to do the same for me. Money I've saved could just as easily go to sending my kid to school than me using it to buy myself a sweet new ride on mower. It's not exactly the same, but it has the same feel.

We could link that to BurdensomeCounts (I think?) prior post on how our intuitive thinking breaks down when dealing with above Dunbar numbers of people. If we see something that works with our direct local community, it's kind of grandfathered in to our thinking when we start looking at large numbers of people.

Also in the US at least, due to the historical issues with slavery, the tension in thinking between "that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; ..." and enslaving a group of people and their descendents has created a national guilt of sorts around racism.

We see this tension right at the beginning in the Founding Fathers who wrote things like: “the only unavoidable subject of regret.” and “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” So this isn't some modern invention. The tension was seen right from the get go.

The reason racism is seen as so bad in the US is because of this collision between the idea of the US as the "shining city on the hill" as part of its founding mythos and how then failing to live up to their own ideals is seen as a "hideous blot". This kind of meta belief is in my experience as an outsider shared by many Americans whether on the right or left. The Civil Rights Acts et al did not cause it, they are the symptom of it.

My Trump voting conservative neighbors, believe that a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin and that is part of the foundation of their belief set. That America is a place where dreams can come true for anyone, where anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and have a chance of success, where Man is created in God's image. This is inherently at odds with treating a sub group of people as cattle. It can be rationalized away, because we are amazing at rationalizing away contradictions, but as HyncklaCG will always remind us, there is a reason Republicans were the original abolitionists. "The Radicals were heavily influenced by religious ideals, and many were Protestant reformers who saw slavery as evil.."

Comparing racism to anything in the US is going to be tricky because racism is a cloud that hangs over the national sense of identity, the tarnish on their otherwise exceptional outcomes. Not compared to the rest of the world but compared to their own standards. It's like a straight A student who agonises over a single D compared to a student who barely passes any of their classes. The very thing that pushes them to be exceptional also means their (perceived) past failures hurt that much more.

The question then would be, why would you expect Americans (in general) to think Marxism is worse than racism, when their only real direct experiences with anything like communism were probably somewhat positive, and that the juxtaposition of the inspiring rhetoric of their nation's founding has one tarnish which looms to an outsize degree in the collective consciousness. It is not comparing like with like.

It would be like going to Ireland and trying to find a legislative cause as to why they might think Marxism is more socially acceptable than Religious persecution or British Imperialism. Each nations cultural and social beliefs can only be understood in relation to their own historical context. The success in the export of American cultural values does also muddy this of course. Is racism more or less socially acceptable than British Imperialism in Londonderry/Derry would be an interesting comparison.

God, I love this place. I should start paying people in crypto for replies that make me think in new ways or something.

No sir it is not BurdensomeCount's post. In fact it is the great risen @BurdensomeCountTheWhite's post.

Wait somehow tagging the OG profile makes it into the new one. Weird.

Communist deaths are framed as attributable to mismanagement or mistakes, whereas deaths attributable to racism or imperialism are intentional

Right, that may be another factor as I mentioned below. We do on a human scale treat murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide differently, even though the end state is still a death. Whether that makes sense scaled up to millions of deaths is a different question.

The traditional family unit is far more similar to fascism than communism, a fact which was understood and asserted by the critical theorists who conducted their research into The Authoritarian Personality, a foundational text to modern Wokeness.

What is the proof of family units being like fascism instead of communism?

Why does it matter? Actually existing fascism and communism are fundamentally the same in nature and only differ in rhetoric. The family is, of course, utterly unlike either in rhetoric so the comparison has to be based on substance.

Actually existing fascism and communism are fundamentally the same in nature and only differ in rhetoric.

This doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny if for no other reason than actually existing fascism supported religion while communism dismantled it

Italian/Iberian fascism, sure. But Nazi fascism? They were merely being pragmatic about Christianity. Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler hated Christianity. Hitler was more wavering, but Christianity 100% would've been made verboten in a hypothetical Thousand Year Reich eventually.

That's your idle speculation, did the NSDAP ban religious worship or not?

(The answer is no, they banned Judaism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Masonry, but unlike communism, did not dismantle religion)

I don't think they are actually the same in nature.

But the reason I ask about the family structure being more like fascism is because I've only ever seen that claim in the context of trying to cast conservatives as fascists. It was a talking point during the 2016 US election. So to see it alluded to here surprised me, that's all.

Traditional familial structure is associated with patriarchy and father-figure role, hierarchy within families and between kin groups, concentric circles of concern correlated with kin-group and genetic similarity. Not class struggle, but genetic cooperation expressed as family love and solidarity.

Communism, a political arrangement where all property is publicly owned and all are paid by their needs, is not even close to being more similar to the familial structure than fascism.

The Critical Theorists in particular related familial discipline to propensity for latent fascist tendencies, i.e.:

A central idea of The Authoritarian Personality is that authoritarianism is the result of a Freudian developmental model. Excessively harsh and punitive parenting was posited to cause children to feel immense anger towards their parents; yet fear of parental disapproval or punishment caused people to not directly confront their parents, but rather to identify with and idolize authority figures. Moreover, the book suggested that authoritarianism was rooted in suppressed homosexuality, which was redirected into outward hostility towards the father, which was, in turn, suppressed for fear of being infantilized and castrated by the father. This hypothesis was consistent with prevailing psychological theories of the time, and Frenkel-Brunswik reported some preliminary support, but empirical data have generally not confirmed this prediction. Authoritarianism was measured by the F-scale. The "F" was short for "pre-fascist personality." Another major hypothesis of the book is that the authoritarian syndrome is predisposed to right-wing ideology and therefore receptive to fascist governments.

Kevin MacDonald has an excellent chapter on TAP. MacDonald shows that the Critical Theorists would, for example, survey respondents to measure the level of discipline exerted by the parents of the respondents. Then, even though the children who reported a more disciplined household also reported closer relations to their parents, the researchers concluded that the lower-discipline households were healthier because the respondents of those households felt more "honest" to be open about the rifts in their family.

So the "post-modern neomarxists" certainly argued the traditional family structure was more similar to fascism than communism.

Comparing fascism and communism is more nuanced than most people would think I would agree. but do you think the average American is likely to think of their household as fascist, regardless of what critical theorists think?

We're talking about people's perceptions here, remember.

but do you think the average American is likely to think of their household as fascist, regardless of what critical theorists think?

Nope, but the reason for that is not because their family arrangement is more similar to communism than fascism, their perception is due to the cultural signals they've been inundated with their entire lives and have thoroughly internalized. Those cultural signals were indeed influenced by the perception of the Critical Theorists, so what the Critical Theorists thought actually does matter because of its influence on culture and academia.

Nope, but the reason for that is not because their family arrangement is more similar to communism than fascism, their perception is due to the cultural signals they've been inundated with their entire lives and have thoroughly internalized. Those cultural signals were indeed influenced by the perception of the Critical Theorists, so what the Critical Theorists thought actually does matter because of its influence on culture and academia.

Or is it because of the national mythos and about defeating Nazism in WW2? Being integrated into the founding mythos of being the beacon of liberty and justice, combined with having direct examples in the US of racial discrimination and making the connection to what Nazis were doing in Europe?

Did Critical Theorists invent that connection or is it a logical one? I don't think Critical Theorists have had a great deal of influence on church going, conservative rural Americans. I think their own ideology and experience is enough to explain why they would reject fascism but have some non-negative views of communal living. Leftish Social welfare policies are popular in poor areas because they benefit from them, even if they are otherwise conservative. You don't need to explain that with critical theory, just as you don't have to explain why struggling people in high immigration areas might be against further immigration. Some things just follow.

Well yes, I certainly believe that public perception of Fascism versus Marxism is downstream from the national mythos, that was my point. It's not related to Marxism feeling closer to an organic family structure, because it isn't. The "national mythos" in turn comes from the institutions most influential in creating myth, culture, and academia, it doesn't come from a grounded reality.

Did Critical Theorists invent that connection or is it a logical one?

What the Critical Theorists did was develop a framework that pathologized the traditional family structure, traditional values, and white ethnocentrism. It's the same thing the Marxists do, they take organic hierarchies like class and assume them to be artificial figments of some injustice. They did not invent the connection so much as they falsely pathologized it and developed a therapeutic framework that greatly influenced cultural movements into what we now call Wokeness.

Being integrated into the founding mythos of being the beacon of liberty and justice

Yeah, it's really incredible how Western democracies waged an unnecessary world war that destroyed Old Europe, killed tens of millions, and handed half the continent to Stalin and turned that outcome into being the foundational story of the US as a beacon of liberty and justice. They saved Hitler from conquering the world, a truly audacious claim made by the alliance of the USSR, United States, and British Empire.

The "lessons" learned from that conflict are just more mythos: Hitler gassed Jews in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, so that means White people cannot have their own spaces and White people cannot advocate for their ethnic interests.

These ideologically-motivated culture-creators created the foundational mythos, the foundational mythos did not create them.

These ideologically-motivated culture-creators created the foundational mythos, the foundational mythos did not create them.

Are you sure? I don't think anyone creates it, it's a gestalt entity that evolves over time, and is largely immune to individuals trying to push it. And I say that, as someone whose job used to be to try. My experience is that you can't create or control what large groups of people think, at best you can tap into things they already believe and maybe, maybe nudge it slightly. And that is with modern tools and communications technology. Being the all-conquering heroes who saved Old Europe is a narrative that makes us feel strong and powerful and moral, so of course that will preferred to one where we handed power to an even worse tyrant. You don't need anyone pushing that, it pushes itself. Hitler gassed Jews? Well that fits, that just means we were even more right! The people who spread those ideas are not (in a viral meme sense) the infectors, they are the infectees.

So I guess that is a long winded way of saying I think you are exactly incorrect, no-one created it, and no-one can. We created it collectively, out of our own inherent desire to be the good person, reinforced by our neighbors and their neighbors. It's human nature.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust.

Not in the United States. In the United States, it has historically been "racists" who were the perpetrators of various sorts of legal and extralegal repression. Of course, that is because Marxists have never been in power in the US, but that is the nature of historical contingency, and the current relative social acceptance of the two is a historically contingent fact.

California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore,

It is actually an open question whether CA law applied to Damore. The CA Labor Code does not refer explicitly to political beliefs, but rather to political activiities and actions

  1. No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office. (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees. (Enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90.)
  1. No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

The law has been interpreted broadly, but I don't know that it has been applied to criticisms of internal company policy. Note that, in the analogous case of the free speech rights of public employee, the Supreme Court has held that criticism of internal policy is not protected speech. Of course, the federal jurisprudence on public employee free speech is terrible, so it would not surprise me if CA courts go in a different direction.

Not in the United States. In the United States, it has historically been "racists" who were the perpetrators of various sorts of legal and extralegal repression. Of course, that is because Marxists have never been in power in the US, but that is the nature of historical contingency, and the current relative social acceptance of the two is a historically contingent fact.

Why stop zooming in at the country level? I live in Madison, Wisconsin, which basically didn't even have anyone other than whites until the '50s, more or less precluding it from the era of race terrorism. In contrast, we had violent leftist assholes blowing up buildings and murdering postdocs in the process. Sure, I'll decry historical lynchings with the utmost vigor, but people in my neck of the woods should have more social memory for leftist violence than racist violence. I would suggest that the difference is that people just kind of think the leftists have a point, even if they go too far.

Why stop zooming in at the country level?

Because, as I understood it, the question was about attitudes at the country level.

Marxists have never been “in power” but somehow their violence is both forgiven and largely forgotten.

We can see this happening now. The press will be talking about Jan 6 for decades to come, but won’t mention the violence of the preceding summer save for the terrible injustice of the Rittenhouse acquittal.

Good argument. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Nobody yet seems to have considered that amongst normal 15-25 year old people, right-wingers are less pleasant to be around than "Marxists", and have comparatively much lower social status. I am not talking about behavioral extremists who interrupt lectures or something. I'm talking about how for some rando college student, their cool friend who is eloquent and gets invited to parties is far more likely to subscribe to some far-left ideology than a far-right one.

Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?

I feel like these dynamics are reflected in other age groups too, to an extent. Right wingers who are smart and eloquent have carved out their niche on the internet, but in meatspace there is a vast discrepancy in likable-human-capital.

It depends. I’d be much more embarrassed by the guy who studied French Lit. He’s much less likely to be gainfully employed, and much more likely to have public meltdowns. What I’ve found in “meatspace” is that decades of social oppression of racism has taught racists to not be openly racist while social approval has taught SJWs to throw tantrums in public.

Depends on the type of Marxist I suppose. Freddie deBoer pulls it off without succumbing to woke ideology or being an 'unemployed, poor loser'.

Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?

Absolutely the Marxist. He could go off at any time and have an embarrassing meltdown at someone, possibly even me, in public, about some tiny slight or microaggression. Being friends with these people is a nightmare of hoping nothing sets them off and ruins the rest of your day. I don't have to worry about that with the other guy.

Real life isn't the internet. The average Marxist friend is just a dude concerned with sounding smart and banging chicks. Maybe it's because I'm a European, but "Marxist" here doesn't mean "cares about microaggressions".

This is simply not true. The Germans cancelled Karl freakin' May for crying out loud.

For a while Euros could enjoy the time lag between cultural changes taking hold in America before they made their way to Europe, but it's over. Right now, from west to east, if you want to call yourself left wing, you have to be on board with San Francisco morality.

The Germans cancelled Karl freakin' May for crying out loud.

Are you a friend of this Karl May? If not, this is still an "internet event" for you. My friend group has actual Marxists in it, and quite a lot of left-wing people, or at least people who strongly support LGBT or whatever the American embassy has cook up for them in a given month. Nevertheless, I have not seen a public meltdown once.

Then again, we are a homogeneous Catholic nation, and our only experience with immigrants was Syrians passing through, and then a wave of SE immigrant workers who everybody agrees are nice and doesn't really think about. Funny enough, we've held a couple of BLM marches (allegedly) but they mostly didn't register. I suppose our strongest leftist factions are LGBT and feminists, but no real tantrums happen (outside of popular instagram pages "calling out misogyny").

For a while Euros could enjoy the time lag between cultural changes taking hold in America before they made their way to Europe, but it's over.

I mean, I agree. It's just that nothing really important happens here in my country, and we have very little ammunition to cancel people with. Maybe Germany really has become like the US as of late (in terms of public-meltdown-having leftist activists gaining power), I just wouldn't know.

I mean, I agree. It's just that nothing really important happens here in my country

Europe is probably slightly bigger than just your country. You also might be surprised, there's a big push for gender self-ID laws right now, and some of the countries you'd least expect hop on the train.

Are you a friend of this Karl May?

Every boy who grew in formerly Marxist Central Europe is friend of Karl May, because Marxists liked Karl May a lot, because they printed his books by the millions and made(together with Western capitalists) dozens of movies based on his works.

No surprise, these are extremely progressive works where working class heroes fight against big landlords, big ranchers, railroad and oil companies and other exploiters.

If Karl May was really cancelled in today's Germany, it is anything than victory for Marxism.

Yes, we shall judge Marxism according to the decades when Marxists were in power, not according to contemporary rainbow furry freaks, even when they wave red flags.

Just like we, for example, judge Christianity according to 15+ centuries when Christianity was in power, not according to disheveled freaks screaming at street and internet corners that the end is near.

If Karl May was really cancelled in today's Germany, it is anything than victory for Marxism.

I mention it every once in a while, I have a lot of sympathy for Legacy Marxists. The successor ideology has a knack for killing things and wearing them as a skin suit, so I'm happy to admit whatever the hell they're pushing isn't Marxism, but when they wearing it as skin suit a statement like ' "Marxist" here doesn't mean "cares about microaggressions" ' is clearly false.

What do you mean "have to"? There are plenty of so-called "dirtbag leftists" out there.

Either already canceled and a part of the "far right", or " safe edgy".

I've met dirtbag leftists in person. None of them seemed to be considered far right by those around them. As for "safe edgy", this doesn't mean much unless you define it more specifically because unless you do that, you could always point to any non-canceled dirtbag leftist and say "he was not edgy enough".

I've met dirtbag leftists in person. None of them seemed to be considered far right by those around them.

Well, I met them on /r/stupidpol. They are "far right", other left wing subs ban you for posting there.

As for "safe edgy", this doesn't mean much unless you define it more specifically because unless you do that, you could always point to any non-canceled dirtbag leftist and say "he was not edgy enough".

Sorry, I haven't spent enough time on this to give you a proper definition, but "safe edgy" would be someone like Vaush. He's plenty edgy (which occasionally gets him into trouble), but always careful to align himself with the establishment.

More comments

I used to think cancellation was an internet thing, something you didn't have to worry about unless you were the unlucky, one in a million person who went viral. Then I saw a woman I know (who is herself very woke by my standards) get cut off from her entire social circle because of one comment. She apologized profusely but still her old friends won't hang out with her or talk to her.

I always had way more fun with my friends who could make any joke, as opposed to the group sitting in a circle ready to joust over who's the most self-righteous.

Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?

Definitely the effete Marxist. Everything about that guy sounds embarrassing. Is he even employed? He sounds like the kind of guy that has daddy's money, but goes around saying things like "eat the rich". The programmer is probably "racist" to the extent that he reads Steve Sailer and "homophobic" to the extent that he made a gay joke. Neither of those require my fainting couch.

Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?

Isn't the logic you're using here a little circular? If I'm reading you right, you're saying that the Marxist friend is cool thanks to qualities he possesses that are unrelated to his political beliefs (reading French literature and watching art films), and that his non-political coolness causes people to view his political beliefs in a more positive light. So we'd expect that the programmer friend's coolness or lack thereof, likewise, would be determined by his non-political qualities.

Only, besides his occupation you haven't described any of his non-political qualities. You've just told us he's racist and homophobic. So unless you just mean that being a programmer is inherently embarrassing, we can only assume that the reason he might bring shame to you is because he might make his political beliefs known by saying something racist or homophobic. So to me it sounds like you're saying that right-wing beliefs are unpopular because the people who hold them are uncool, and the reason people who hold them are uncool is because right-wing beliefs are unpopular.

Hmm, I dunno. That whole r/antiwork debacle was an excellent case study in the wide gulf between how radical leftists present themselves on the internet vs. how they look and act in meatspace. Whenever you see those compilations of Antifa mugshots, they generally look like weird, off-putting crusty people who smoke too much weed and bathe infrequently.

I think it comes back to the point I made here. As a rule, high-status people (attractive, charming, neurotypical, able to hold down a steady job, high income etc.) are not pursuing radical changes to the society in which they live, as they know full well they don't stand to gain as a result of these changes. The only people who can reliably be assumed to support radically changing society from the ground up are the losers in the current system. Go to any meeting of far-right or far-left people and you will be disproportionately likely to encounter people who are physically unattractive, lacking in social graces, working in unskilled jobs etc..

No question that far-right 4chan posters ranting about da joos aren't getting invited to many cool parties - but neither is Doreen, the founder of /r/antiwork, and no one is more acutely aware of that fact than they are.

part of the reason people look like losers in mugshots is because they are in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and anxious, having just been arrested . It's not like they can take many photos under ideal conditions , relaxed, and then use the best photo.

maybe this would have been true 15 years ago, but many of the people who are being de-platformed , exiled, or excluded are not always losers anymore. I think a fair number of successful, rich leftists in tech, NGOs, politics, law actually do seek radical change at a societal level

part of the reason people look like losers in mugshots is because they are in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and anxious, having just been arrested

I don't mean they look like losers because they're in an uncomfortable setting with bad lighting and they're anxious. I mean they look like a specific category of loser: over-/under-weight, loads of horrible facial piercings, hair in natty dreadlocks and/or dyed a shade that doesn't exist in nature, face tattoos, bad teeth.

Why would the programmer friend bring any more shame than the Marxist, assuming they have similar energy levels and manner of speaking?

I think the idea here is that the techbro will belch racist and homophobic insults at the assembled guests, while the charming Marxist will discourse eloquently on "sublimation or deconstruction of Fascist symbology in Cocteau's Orphée?" because of course that is how the right versus left/knuckledraggers versus open-minded/bitter clingers versus college-educated middle class kabuki drama plays out in the dream world of such people.

(I'm down for a good old chat about Cocteau's movie because I saw it on TV when I was about nine and loved it, but I'm not tolerating no Marxism, no matter how charming, as morally/ethically/just nice and 'one of us' superior to the sloped brow techbro).

Nobody yet seems to have considered that amongst normal 15-25 year old people, right-wingers are less pleasant to be around than "Marxists", and have comparatively much lower social status. I am not talking about behavioral extremists who interrupt lectures or something. I'm talking about how for some rando college student, their cool friend who is eloquent and gets invited to parties is far more likely to subscribe to some far-left ideology than a far-right one.

Nobody has considered it, because we know it's not true. I do understand how it might seem like it's true from your perspective, because people like me learned to keep their mouths shut, or pretend to agree with the regime-aligned opinions, when I'm not posting anonymously, or am not around people I trust to not flip out over disagreement. So from where you sit, all the nice people will be non-rightwing.

Who is more likely to bring you shame when you bring him around, your racist and homophobic programmer friend, or your Marxist friend who reads French literature and watches art films in his free time?

You're confusing cause with effect here. Your Marxist friend who reads French literature can openly joke about sending people he doesn't like to the gulag, and solicit only mild chuckles, while your "racist" "homophobic" programmer friend would shame you by saying things like "the Jussie Smollet thing is an obvious hoax" (at the time when it was unfolding, and possibly even now), or "puberty blockers are not reversible".

15-20 year olds are generally intolerable no matter their politics.

Academics in Saudi Arabia are Sunni muslims, Academics in Berlin were national socialists in 1940 and communists in 1960. People probably greatly overestimate the influence of academia and underestimate the extent that academia promotes what is popular. Universities are finishing schools that train the future employees of government and business. They train their students in what their future employers want. There are academics of all opinioins but only some get attention. Michelle Foucault got CIA funding, other academics had the security state working against them.

The US isn't as much a country as it is the center of a global empire. Having an empire requires not having a strong central culture or people. An empire is almost by definition multicultural. Maintaining an empire with one ethnic group at the core and one culture at the core is hard unless the colonials are far behind the people in the imperial core.

Early Rome could be racist and intolerant. A Rome in which latins were a tiny minority had to be inclusive, diverse and tolerant of norms outside of the norms of the latin tribes. The big cities in the US aren't just big american cities, they are imperial centers. They will therefore have to have lots of people from other countries. Having strongly enforced WASP culture and WASP ethnonationalism is hard when the empire largely consists of and is largely staffed by non WASPs.

Also the US dollar is far too expensive compared to how many dollars are printed. This means that prices in the US will be too expensive. Having a global reserve currency and having prices that aren't completely through the moon requires having a large imported underclass that works in agriculture, food services and construction. There can't be a conservative WASP ethnostate with tens of millions of latin American and Filipino migrant workers.

I think it's difficult to understate just how important the effect of Stalin's takeover the Soviet Union had on American/European Marxist circles. There would forever after be two strains of thought that were perfectly intuitive and did not feel at all like a cop out.

1

Marxism works but starting it in Russia made no sense. The whole point is that Capitalism builds the capitol base and then once enough production exists only then do we shift how that production is distributed. But the only place Marxist revolutions happened were in Russia & China among peasants. This was an obvious corruption of original Marxism. It actually literally has never been tried.

For a modern day case of these, see Freddie DeBoer. The point isn't whether its true. It's whether or not a reasonable person who hasn't spend over 9000 hour studying microeconomics might find such an argument convincing.

2

It was going to work until Stalin betrayed the cause. A uniquely evil man. He corrupted Lenin's vision. He turned on all the original revolutionaries. He corrupted what would have otherwise been a functioning system. In this mindset the horrors of early War Communism don't exist. The USSR was going to work! Just look at those improvements in literacy rates! And Magnitogorsk! And all these rights that they had paper. But I'm not a fool. I know it didn't work. But just read Animal Farm. Or look at the Spanish Revolution. It's right there in how we were all working together until that bastard Stalin screwed it all up. I'm a communist because I approve of Lenin/Trotsky/Kropotkin's ideals, whose revolution was stolen away from them, but obviously i'm not a "Tankie". Those types of violations by the USSR is just proof of how Stalin messed it all up going forward.

And that's pretty much all you need. To the person who thinks in such a manner it doesn't feel like a cop out. It feels like sophistication. You can't even distinguish between communism, socialism, marxism, trotsky permanent revolution, Louis Blanque-ism Guaranteed Employment, Rosa Luxemburg thought, or Progressive Labor Union Revisionism for the Purposes of Getting Workers Used to Working in Committees Until the Actual Revolution. You just call all of it Marxist. But I know better. It's not that communism doesn't work. I know that in reality it was betrayed.

You don't even need to be personally invested in it all. You just need a disposition towards "everyone should have enough" and a smart friend who can answer your occasional question (or a youtube parasocial relation) and who can give you explanations that feel plausible. Enough to make you saudade for a world you've never known. Enough to make you put on the Soviet Anthem and smile on occasion before your next shift. Enough to make you call yourself a Marxist even though you don't think anything will change anytime soon. And then you listen to someone call Obama a Communist because he wants to create a.....marketplace for healthcare. And you roll your eyes and smile.

Because you know that real communism has never been tried.

Calling all artists on the Motte! I am currently looking for someone to ink some scripts I have written for a one-panel newspaper comic called Rosa Luxemburg Thought..., where every gag is based on a tiny little Robber-Baron-Era American Communist is asleep in one corner and the cartoon is a dream balloon of what Rosa is dreaming about.

Then in the dream-balloon, you cut out old circa-1980s Family Circus strips and paste them down.

Then I get 50 percent of the money and credit as "writer," but when people accuse us of plagiarism, I pin it all on you.

Any takers?

Great post, but Argument #2 can be made equally well about, say, Jared Taylor's belief system, whatever you call it. "The bad men who perpetrated Jim Crow weren't holding true to my ideas. Real freedom of association hasn't been tried."

I guess the point isn't that the argument is literally true, but rather, whether the argument can be used to justify taking other people's stuff and giving it to you. Which is extremely uncharitable of me to say, I'll admit, but that's the only way to look at this.

Should be noted there were a plenty of European socialists who argued the point 1 from basically the first years onwards, like Karl Kautsky (see, for example, this, probably considered the most influential Marxist thinker of that era at the time, including by the Bolsheviks who were aghast at his "betrayal". Ie. it's not just from Stalin onwards, though of course Stalin's era also caused a considerable amount of socialists to eventually turn against the Soviet Union.

The wider point is that Marxism, due to its longer lifespan and greater amount of regions it affected, just plain has a greater extent of meanings than National Socialism. Marxist movements and their accomplishments range from Stalin and Mao to the movements that liberated countries from colonial rule, fought as partisans against Nazi occupation and worked in a way that contributed to the eventual institution of welfare state in a number of countries. Marxist and Marxist-derived movements have been democratically elected in a number of countries and have proceeded to rule them with few major issues, whether that rule actually ended up being, strictly speaking, according to Marx's principles or not.

National Socialist movements took over one country, killed millions of people, brought that country to an utter ruin, and all the movements following it have basically been farcical LARPs of that one time with little success beyond terrorizing individual people. As such, someone calling themselves a "Marxist" might mean they advocate any range of positions from extreme to, well, someone that can live and operate in the general scheme of things: someone declaring themselves National Socialist usually means one thing and one thing only.

Your arguments against “National Socialism” only make sense if you apply a very strict definition of the term - i.e. claiming that the only historical example of it is whatever happened in the Third Reich - and ignore all of the other nations with structurally- and philosophically-similar political systems which emerged around the same time or afterward. Salazar’s Portugal, for example, or Franco’s Spain, or Pinochet’s Chile. Given what I’ve inferred about your politics I’m sure you think those were shitty places to live, relative to the alternatives, but I would hope you would acknowledge that reasonable people could interpret them as being successful in at least some ways.

Why do socialists get a pass on distancing themselves from Stalin, and get to appeal to nuance, but anyone who is sympathetic to at least some attenuated form of combining ethnonationalism, anti-communism, and statism gets immediately tarred with the Hitler brush?

Right, right, when writing I had though that the OP of this thread had been a Nazism vs. Marxism comparison, so I was commenting on that, but now that I checked it wasn't that.

This got reported for low effort. And it kind of is. We'd like you to not make a thing where you just re-post about the same topic with slight additions to the content as a way of "bumping" the topic to the topic. That would be obnoxious, so if I think you are doing that again it will result in some mod action.

This is not a mod warning, but I'm going to distinguish the comment to hopefully give some guidance to people.

There were a lot of people upset about me saying a post last week was low effort. And they got worried that I have super strict standards for a top level comment. But I'd like to clarify that this post passes my personal standards for what is "low effort", and it does so while only being 8 sentences long. Here is a breakdown:

Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.

This is the context for the post. It could be replaced with a link to a story, or a link to the post. If they had stopped here it would be equivalent to just dropping a bare link. This is not nearly enough. If its someone that is maybe new I will give a warning, if its a longtime user I will give a ban.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.

This is a spicy opinion part and an observation of the world. But its spicy in a way that doesn't actively insult anyone for believing the opposite of what the poster thinks. Adding this part with the previous part makes it an on the edge post of effort. I might have given a warning if they'd stopped here. Or if the spicyness was trying to insult people it might have been a ban.

California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.

Here is an additional defense of the spicy take. And they've now cleared my "low effort" post standards.

It all adds up.

And this is a useless sentence, which means they could have gotten away with a 7 sentence top level post and it wouldn't be low effort.

So to summarize:

  1. Provide context for the discussion (a story, a personal thought, whatever).
  2. Provide an opinion or take on the context. Something personal that if another person chimes in and disagrees with you, then you are willing to have a discussion with them on why you think you are right. (this is perhaps the most important thing)
  3. Provide a defense of your take, or try to preempt a common counter argument. This shows that you've maybe thought about the thing for more than 30 seconds.

What I don't want to see is "here is a thing, please provide me with content about it!" You are the content here. Having a discussion is the content. When I ask people to start the discussion, that is what I am trying to get at. Ultimately we would like to reward our content creators, or people that start discussions, not those who request discussions.

So, tepidly in support of @Conservautism, but mostly in curiosity about rules and norms, where should we expect the line to be with regard to posting on the same subject? We have some great running series of posts, like the San Francisco housing issues, that I think pretty much no one objects to. On the flip side, we've had some posters in the past that were just incredibly annoying with their repetitive shit-stirring. Is the line less about whether someone is bringing up the same thing repeatedly and more about how annoying they are when doing it? Personally, I think reasonable updates and questions on a weekly basis for a topic of interest that really is interesting to the local audience would be basically fine, but I'm curious where you think the line should be.

"Don't be egregiously obnoxious" is kind of the guiding principle. Sorry there isn't anything more specific. If a bunch of people here found some behavior annoying we'd ask the poster to knock it off. Which has happened with some users that keep posting about Jewish people and the holocaust.

If people find a weekly update on a topic interesting and it generates discussion, then not only is it ok, it could be an AAQC, or turn into a weekly staple. The Transnational Thursdays thread was originally just some posts in the main culture war thread. People liked it a lot, and now its got its own thread.

I absolutely do not want the rules to get in the way of good discussion or good posting. Myself and the other mods will never try to follow the rules over a cliff.

We have some great running series of posts, like the San Francisco housing issues, that I think pretty much no one objects to.

Ah, but why do we not object? I would argue that we find it less bothersome because it's not an overwhelming topic here - you don't get people constantly talking about the failure to build and NIMBYs. It's also a less charged topic, economics generally tends to be.

In contrast, the OP's post touches on several topics far more incendiary, in the sense that you'll get a lot more people offering their own diagnoses of the issue, but often agreeing with the underlying premise. You can also find at least half a dozen posts by the week's end that make a similar sort of point of "progressives stupid/evil".

I don't have any concrete proposals, but one thing I would encourage people to keep in mind before they make a top-level comment is just how much insight they think they're adding to the overall conversation(s), doubly so if it's about race, gender, and sex. If you're a newcomer, lurk more.

Should I have edited the original post instead? Or should I have replied to it directly?

One followup comment a few days later is fine. Especially if the original comment has been knocked way below the waterline on visible comments. And if it starts a discussion in a new direction that is also fine.

If the original comment is still visible then a response comment, or an edit are both fine. Personally I'd do a response comment, but that isn't a mod rule, I just think it would more clearly mark that I have a separate discussion in mind, and people that respond to the response comment are clearly interested in the separate discussion, rather than the original discussion.

Its just two followup comments that would be bad. Which you haven't done (and probably wouldn't have done anyways?), so there is no warning here.

Your posts have to be manually approved the mods, because this alt's posts are being caught in the new user filter, as I'm pretty sure you are well aware.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust.

If Marx Marxism is responsible for those deaths, do leftists have a point when they say that X millions were killed by capitalism?

Edit: Marxism, not Marx

No. The philosophy of appropriating capital has predictably catastrophic results for capital-holders, however small. Perhaps Marx can't be blamed for that by some lights, but I think reading his exhortations in the Communist Manifesto makes it clear that he was enthusiastic about appropriation. Living conditions wind up terrible in the aftermath of this central policy choice, predictably and universally. In any case, the claim above is about Marxism, not Marx personally; surely one man can't be held responsible for various implementations of a poorly thought-out ideology from a century earlier.

In stark contrast, capitalist societies have thrived and consistently improved the living standards of people living with that set of rules. If you want to blame capitalism for living conditions in, say, West Virginia coal-mining company towns, I will agree that capitalism is responsible for that intolerable set of conditions. This will not add up to anything like the crimes encouraged by communism.

but I think reading his exhortations in the Communist Manifesto makes it clear that he was enthusiastic about appropriation.

Certainly. Appropriation, however, doesn't necessarily translate into murder. Likewise, capitalism doesn't require the deaths it caused, but if we're talking about deaths under a system's means of economic production, then I don't see a way in which you count, for example, the Holodomor as a death under Marxism but exclude the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 from the capitalist side.

My point is that you have to be consistent.

Scott had an interesting post a long time ago comparing the death tolls, and came up with vaguely similar ball park numbers.

I would find it interesting to see a post about the number of deaths caused by capitalism, i.e. private ownership of the means of production, and markets.

Many of the lists seem to just be a list of deaths caused by imperialism.

I like capitalism, but not imperialism.

Surely the interesting figure would be deaths per capita?

You could make the symmetric point that many deaths attributed to communism are actually due to totalitarianism or some such. For example, if you believe holodomor was an intentional policy by Stalin to exercise political retribution on Ukrainians, then I wouldn't say that those deaths should be attributable to communism.

I would maybe be willing to walk down that road. But it would not be fair to label all political deaths under communism as simply totalitarianism.

Communism is a form of economic and political organization, and some people are not going to like the arrangement. If someone protests the economic structure of communism and they are killed by a totalitarian regime, I'd still blame that on communism. If someone protests that Joseph Stalin is in charge, and that there should just be someone else in charge of the apparatus of communist government, then I'd say its fair to attribute that death to totalitarianism.

The Holodomor is something I'd attribute to economic protest.

I haven't looked into the numbers on the victims of communism recently. If I remember correctly political deaths were not the largest cause of death. It was instead starvation.

Those starvation deaths seem clearly to be the fault of communism. In both Russia and China there was a working farm system for centuries that had been supplying the food needs of the nation. Famines might only be expected if there was a widespread crop disease or really bad drought.

The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.

The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.

I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?

Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.

And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.

I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?

That is a large amount of slack created by the AI. Typically that much slack in resources can be used to do many things. Resources are transferable between economic sectors in the long term. I have no doubt that communism would escape any blame in this scenario, but yes I'd still say that is a massive failure of communism that basically destroyed resources on a massive scale.

Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.

The outcome was certainly foreseeable after the fifth or sixth attempt. Which is how many attempts singular countries racked up trying to do these farm reorganization schemes, or "land reformation". Less people died in the later attempts ... but there were also less people to feed.

The failure of communism in these cases was a failure of understanding base incentives. They had magical thinking that their reorganization scheme would work. They treated humans like chess pieces, and assumed they would just work themselves to the bone for no reward. If communism is not responsible for these starvation deaths, then there is no meaning to the word "responsible". I can't conceive of a line of thought that absolves communism of these deaths. You say there is one, but you'd have to lay it out for me very carefully for me to understand.

And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.

They are called death tolls, and not murder tolls. Some of the "holocaust deniers" use these same kinds of wheedling arguments. "they weren't outright murdered, they were just starving in this camp because there wasn't enough food for everyone". Why was there a food shortage in Europe ... because there was a war. Why was there a war ... because the Nazi's started one. Likewise with the communists, all roads lead back to fingers pointing at the communist government. At certain levels of power, casual indifference and outright hatred are equally effective at slaughtering millions of people.

They treated humans like chess pieces, and assumed they would just work themselves to the bone for no reward.

And if you are a smart communist and realize this is not going to work? I think I can conceive of that. In a counter-factual world where they transitioned differently would that prove Communism right or good? I don't think it would. But the opposite of that means that transitioning badly, doesn't on its own prove communism wrong or evil either. (But repeated failures should be a clue!)

I think communism is pretty bad actually, but I do think if we look at say land-enclosure in England (which increased efficiency) but concentrated wealth in fewer hands, resulted in rural depopulation and emigration to America and cities to become labourers, is not seen as terrible simply because it increased wealth overall. (Comparisons to the Rust-belt are clear of course). If land-enclosure had been driven by communism (which it could have been, it was all about centralizing control in fewer hands) would its overall success be attributed to communism? Should it be?

So I am not saying communism should be absolved of deaths, just musing on how closely the motivation behind communism is tied to the methods of change employed versus how similar methods in different places at different times might be deemed "successful". I don't have a particular answer.

And if you are a smart communist and realize this is not going to work? I think I can conceive of that.

The problem with communists wasn't that they weren't smart. The problem was that they had an ideology tracing all of the world's problems to capitalism, capitalists, speculators, landlords and so on, and offered full proof scientific solutions in the shape of their economic system. If the latter didn't work, the former must have been to blame. What you're doing is like speculating about "smart scientologists" that didn't blame everything on thetans and suppressive persons, or... well, "smart Nazis" that didn't blame everything on the Jews.

More comments

They are attributable to Communism if Communism lacks checks and balances against Dear Leader killing people.

Communists view imperalism as the inevitable final form of capitalism. "I like capitalism, but not imperialism" sounds to them the way "we shouldn't punish anyone for refusing to work, but everyone should work to the best of their ability" sounds to capitalists.

I think the other arguments brought up here were good. Imperialism seems to be practiced by any government of sufficient size. Including communist governments.

The Lenin paper also assumes the exploitation hypothesis to prove that imperialism is the final form of communism. I think Marx and the other communists were totally wrong on the exploitation hypothesis, so of course their theoretical argument isn't going to be convincing in this area either.

Nowadays it is hard to discuss with sincere communists as they are either deluded or stupid (we sadly tried communism, we know how well it works).

Noncommunists can be persuaded that imperialism is not unique at all to capitalism (see USSR and Roman Empire for start).

This is a point that can be argued, and agreed with or disagreed with. However, to say "X people were killed by capitalism", when they were killed by imperialism, particularly if you know or should know that your conversational partner may not agree with the necessity of the association of capitalism and imperialism, is a way of making a strong point while skipping the work required to actually support it - in other words, the sentence makes sense to you, and it will make sense to your listener, but your listener will take a significantly different meaning from it than the one that you understand it to mean. That's why it's mottebuilding when charitable, and lying otherwise.

Of course we see imperialism in communism. We see imperialism in ancient societies. We see imperialism in feudal societies. If we see imperialism I’m pretty much every society assigning it to capitalism seems…odd

In the viewpoint of Blue Tribe elites, Marxists have essentially zero power in the US, relegated to universities writing books that no one reads: racists, on the other hand, are omnipresent, hiding under every bed and in every closet. And I think the first part, at least, is accurate: even self-described "socialists" pay homage to liberal democratic ideals, and given the choice between letting the proles hang the elites or going to the Met Gala, they'd choose the Met Gala every time. Contemporary Marxism is not an ideology but a cultural affectation, and if there was the slightest risk of a revolutionary uprising that put everyone with glasses up against the wall, they'd be hunting its proponents down with far more vigor than they do with the Damores of today.

Marxism's powerlessness (and capital's power) and lack of rootedness among the general public means it can be used as a kind of fashion accessory. Racism, however, does have more actual salience, so it can be used as a rallying cry to bind together client demographics in a power struggle against the (currently disempowered) opposing segment of the elite. And so Marxism is acceptable (far, unlikely enemy), while attacks against the near enemy have to be justified as fighting the utmost evil in the world.

Globalist liberalism is in complete control of popular expressions leftist ideology. The last gasps of resistance were the early 2000s anti-globalisation demonstrations/riots and Occupy Wall Street. Since then, all the popular left wing causes happen, coincidentally I'm sure!, to further the goals of (and as such get support from) globalist liberalism.

Most elites are left-liberal and thus have an emotional affinity to Marxism in a way they never will to far-right politics. It's about ideological proximity, not rationality. The fact that Marxism was genocidal when it was fully practiced is almost irrelevant.

Genocide requires intent to wipe out a specific ethnos. For example Nazism was genocidal towards Jews and Slavs. While Marxists certainly didn't shy away from political violence or bad policy, they were not "genocidal".

The Soviet Union conducted more than a few sets of mass killings intended to get rid of non-Russianism, even if you don’t accept the holodomor as a genocide. I agree that the bulk of the great leap forwards is just bad policy(not that that makes it any better), but communist mass killings targeting religion are arguably a genocide.

Holodomor was a famine that also affected Russians. Russians were among the primary targets of political repressions. Ukrainian and other minority languages were enforced and supported in institutions.

The idea that they tried to rid themselves of "non-Russians" is ridiculous: several of their most powerful leaders weren't Russian, and Bolsheviks viewed supporting smaller nationalities as a way of internal powet balancing. Their first defining war was against Russian nationalists.

Interestingly, when the Genocide Convention was first proposed, it included political groups, but the USSR refused to go along with that definition, for obvious reasons. And we do refer to the "Cambodian Genocide," most of the victims of which were targeted for their political group membership. And then there was Indonesia in 1965, in which hundreds of thousands of Communist party members were killed. Most genocide scholars consider that a genocide, but of course they are not bound by the UN definition.

I guess this is an argument against consequentialism. Namely, we didn't mean to kill tons of people, we just sort of did. But those baddies over there who did intend to do it nevertheless failed to do so as much as we did, hence we're better people.

Whereas the critics of such a position would simply say, what matters is what you do not what you say or claim to want.

And while I agree that genocide strictly defined is incompatible with Marxism (unless you think of capitalists and kulaks as an ethnicity), ultimately what I look at is how many people the ideology killed and on that count it was simply worst of all ideologies of the 20th century. No contest.

By their fruits you will know them. Was Jesus a consequentialist? Hmm...

While I can agree that killing a million people, thus wiping out an entire ethnicity, is worse than killing a more random sample of a million people, not resulting in wiping any ethnicity out (or when it does, it is by mere chance), but arguing that the latter is not genocidal strikes me as a "well, ackshully it's called 'ephebophilia'" level take.

It's not, because one could also argue that "capitalism is genocidal" if we accept those standards. Communism is bad because it impoverishes people and requires brutal oppression to sustain. But going beyond that, for example counting WW2 dead from both sides as "victims of communism", does disservice to good arguments.

Communism is just not a genocidal ideology in the way that Nazism is.

As others say, you're at best making a semantic argument. I would also like to argue that communism is indeed more genocidal than Nazism.

"Damn everybody other than my ethic in-group" is not that impractical of a life project, it can even be argued that it's simply natural human inclination driven to extreme. "Damn inequality and hierarchy", on the other hand, is at odds with the very bedrock of reality. Hence the disparity in the body count of these two worldviews.

You can run out of undesirable racial groups to kill, but you absolutely cannot run out of your betters. Communist project is completed when the last proletarian shoots the last kulak in the head. Perfect communism in not possible in practice, much like a perfect circle must remain in the realm of platonic forms, but you can still go quite far - current world record of communism belongs to Pol Pot with up to a third of Cambodia's population dead

You can run out of undesirable racial groups to kill

Not really. Let's say that I am a pro-X ethnic nationalist. Once I kill everyone who is obviously not X, I then suddenly realize that actually a bunch of people who I previously thought were X are actually degenerate lower versions of X, perhaps ones hybridized with non-X blood. How had I been so blind before? Of course, to purify X I must destroy these degenerate forms, especially the ones who have resources I want to appropriate. And once I have wiped those out, for the good of the blood and the future of X, I must find and eradicate those members of X who do not represent the true ideal of X blood. This will help bring about the true X society of the future. And so on.

I think you're missing my point. I'm conceding that it's not genocidal, but my point is that it's effectively arguing over semantics.

requires brutal oppression to sustain

Bingo. This is actually the relevant issue, far more then the material poverty it causes (although arguably one stems from the other). The part that you missed is that the ideology provides justification for said brutal oppression. Without it, I could file it under utopian-but-suicidal ideas like "abolish the police" or "open borders", it is the "all means are justified on the way towards our glorious future" bit that makes the ideology monstrous, even if it is not technically "genocidal".

I believe it's because Marxism better comports with Christian egalitarianism.

Yep this hits the nail on the head, in my view. Christians will tend to argue otherwise but Jesus did very explicitly argue for a sort of Saturnalian reversal quite often. The last shall be first, and all that.

I'm sure there are reasons why Christianity is more nuanced than Marxism, but they do have similar themes. Capitalists could easily be this wicked and corrupt generation.

Thank you for this post with a completely alien perspective of my faith. It shows me where the real battle for understanding is.

I have worked for a Christian businessman before, and were it not for that job, I would have found less professional success in my life, and less freedom from my emotional turmoil. It was the job with the healthiest emotional environment I’ve ever been in. Yet his small business, his petit bourgeois success, is exactly the kind that Marxists would make impossible.

C.S. Lewis would have said that the Saturnalian reversal was an echo in pagan thought of the later true divine reversal in which the Son of God washed his followers’ dusty feet and, instead of taking over the world and ruling it, willingly dying for the sins of all. Satan the rebel wanted God brought low, but not like this.

The purported words of Jesus seem pretty unambiguous to me. I don't see how the following can be interpreted to mean anything other than that a "Christian businessman" is like a "communist businessman". You can be a Christian or communist businessman, but only with the understanding that this is a temporary state that is inferior to the ideal one and if you were more virtuous, you would not be a businessman.

Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments." "Which ones?" he inquired. Jesus replied, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself." "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

I’ll point out that in apostolic Christianity, this story is taken as laying out requirements of monasticism, not as a universal command on the faithful.

Just got back from bible study where we happened to discuss a similar story that makes it obvious Jesus here was yanking the guys chain and having a laugh with his buddies. "All these I have kept" is obviously not true - the dude tried to tell God to His face that he had never told a fib or disrespected his parents. So Jesus tells him "well if you're so perfect, drop everything and come along with me." Jesus is calling his bluff.

"Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" is a joke. It's funny. Jesus is pretty clearly saying "rich people tend to be so consumed by their wealth they have no room in their heart for Me."

One of the things we discussed in fellowship this morning was the story of Zacchaeus (https://www.bibleref.com/Luke/19/Luke-chapter-19.html), a rich tax collector who told Jesus he had given away half his possessions to the poor. Jesus told him he was good to go, clear for takeoff. So obviously the camel thing was a joke.

Do you understand how, to somebody who is not a Christian and who is not invested in believing in the most favorable possible interpretation of your faith, this just seems like extra-special pleading? Surely there are a great many things which Jesus is recorded has having said which you consider deeply profound insights and statements of Jesus’ - and, by extension, God’s - true beliefs. Why, then, should we take seriously your contention that this particular statement - one which just happens to present an extremely inconvenient dilemma for your other non-religious philosophical and material commitments if taken literally and seriously - is just obviously a joke and Jesus didn’t really mean it, unlike all the other stuff he said that you agree with?

Do you understand how, to somebody who is not a Christian and who is not invested in believing in the most favorable possible interpretation of your faith, this just seems like extra-special pleading?

Sure, I understand completely. I used to be a fairly militant atheist and used to sometimes bring up the camel quip myself.

That said, I'm not interested in 'the most favorable possible interpretation' of the scriptures, I'm interested in using my mind to test and discern what interpretation is most pleasing to God (Romans 12:2).

Surely there are a great many things which Jesus is recorded has having said which you consider deeply profound insights and statements of Jesus’ - and, by extension, God’s - true beliefs.

Funny enough, not really. The first time I sat down and really read the gospels, most of the stuff was kind of nod along, "yeah that makes sense," but there's no earth-shattering revelations on the surface level. You have to study for those insights.

Why, then, should we take seriously your contention that this particular statement - one which just happens to present an extremely inconvenient dilemma for your other non-religious philosophical and material commitments if taken literally and seriously - is just obviously a joke and Jesus didn’t really mean it, unlike all the other stuff he said that you agree with?

This is the question I just answered, tho. You're never going to understand the gestalt of a man/God's philosophy from isolating a single sentence. You have to look at all the parts in conjunction to get a sense of the whole. In this case, Jesus spoke more than once about rich people and getting into heaven. Yes, he did say the camel thing. He also told Zacchaeus - another rich guy - that he was going to heaven. Therefore, since it is impossible for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, but demonstrably possible for a rich guy (Zacchaeus) to get into heaven, Jesus was obviously not being literal or completely serious when he said the camel thing.

And again let's remember the context in which he said it: He had just called out some rich poser. The guy was skulking away with his tail between his legs. "Then Jesus said to his disciples" aka he turned away from the crowd to make an aside to his buddies (Matthew 19:23). Sometimes when people say things to their friends that are not completely serious, it is called a joke.

Finally let's look at the disciple's response: "The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked." Clearly they did not get the joke. But Jesus lets them off the hook, "look[ing] at them intently and say[ing], "Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” Clarifying that 1) He was not being literal about the camel thing 2) rich people can indeed go to heaven 3) He had a playful sense of humor.

Sometimes when people say things to their friends that are not completely serious, it is called a joke.

Finally let's look at the disciple's response: "The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked." Clearly they did not get the joke.

Okay, but there are tons of examples of Jesus telling those same people that he is God incarnate, that eternal salvation is only possible through following him and taking seriously his commandments and proclamations. Given this, don’t you think that if he really had been God incarnate and really was intent on leading his followers to salvation, he would have, I dunno, been a bit more responsible about speaking clearly and not making muddled and seemingly-contradictory statements?

Joking around and making statements which seem to be literal imprecations about the correct way to live - with, again, the stakes having previously been established as whether or not you will receive eternal salvation, or suffer eternally - but which are actually jokes, or flippant statements, or intentional obfuscations… this seems much more like the behavior of a normal mortal human man, a charismatic but narcissistic cult leader with both the standard human failings and additionally the failure modes particular to that specific personality type.

More comments

Do you understand how, to somebody who is not a Christian and who is not invested in believing in the most favorable possible interpretation of your faith, this just seems like extra-special pleading?

I don't think the response above is a particularly good way of phrasing things, but a verse was presented and a claim was made that the verse is a general rule. He provided another verse that contradicts that supposed general rule. Nothing in the text of the first verse actually establishes a general rule, the existence of such a rule is an inference, and the second verse shows that the inference is false.

Maybe the text is completely contradictory, and it's all gobbledegook. Maybe it's actually a bit more complex, and grabbing single sentences out of a massive text loses important context. What it isn't, is true that Jesus taught, or Christians believe, that material wealth precludes salvation. That is a misconception fostered by people looking for easy dismissals.

For the record, I do not think Jesus is joking in that passage. What that guy actually needed to do was give everything away and follow Jesus. That was the thing he was not willing to do.

I love my wife and would do anything for her. I do not actually have to do everything for her, but I am willing to do whatever she needs me to do. That commitment is made without limit, and yet I can continue to live a life that is, in many ways, still mine, so long as it does not conflict with my commitment to her. What I cannot do is to put some thing before that commitment, choose some other thing over her should a conflict arise. Zaccheus' money doesn't come between him and God; he voluntarily pays back those he's wronged and gives to the poor because he wants to do the right thing, and Jesus approves. The Rich Young Ruler wants to be seen as righteous, but his money is more precious to him than actually being righteous, and that's why he goes away. There's numerous other examples throughout the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that drive the point home, but this would require actually reading the thing or listening seriously to someone who has, and who has time for that, when one can mine pull-quotes out of context for a political agenda?

For the record, I do not think Jesus is joking in that passage. What that guy actually needed to do was give everything away and follow Jesus. That was the thing he was not willing to do.

I actually agree with you here. I think making it a joke, is probably tonally not in line with how Jesus speaks. But likewise it isn't a global stricture. Some rich people can get into Heaven, some can't. I think that is the most consistent reading.

But some Christians apparently believe He was joking, and some believe He meant that all rich people were barred from Heaven. Can people with all three interpretations all still be Christian? Probably I'd imagine.

More comments

Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner; give away all your shit and give no thought to the morrow, love your neighbor and turn the other cheek are all way more reasonable if worldly things like providing for your family, planning for the future, taking care of yourself, and not being punched on both sides of your face are about to not matter. Early Christians also thought that the apocalypse was right around the corner, until the world kept inconveniently persistently existing and they had to re-think their expectations.

Then the protestant reformation happened and some people started taking literalist readings of the original text, and came to the same conclusion of early Christians; the end of the world is right around the corner. And thus we have that marvelous work of human literature, Left Behind.

IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.

IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.

Believe you are thinking of The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing aka The Shakers. I also thought they were fully extinct, but it seems they're merely functionally extinct, with either 2 or 3 (seeing conflicting reports) remaining in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner

What is the basis for this assertion

I suspect:

Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matthew 16:28, and Mark 9:1, NIV)

“Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” ... Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. (Matthew 24:34, NIV)

There isn't one. He's basing the statement on a misinterpretation, albeit one that some Christians have also fallen for from time to time.

The difference between a misinterpretation and the correct and true meaning of the text seems to be kinda fuzzy. Earlier in the thread, it was claimed that one Jesus quote is a joke, the other is totes super-profound.

More comments

You and I know that but others might not, it'd be more cool if people didn't make baseless assertions, but so it goes

A flattering thought if you're a member of the atheism plus crowd but the sad truth is that there is nothing particularly Christian or egalitarian about Marxism, just the opposite in fact

I think at small scales it certainly can be. A Christian household where the main breadwinner, explicitly puts his children and wife above himself when using the fruits of his labour to sustain them and make them happy (something I see in the conservative families around me all the time), and their charity in looking after unfortunate souls in their family/town.

Acts 2:44–45 “And all that believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need

Has at least some overlap with:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

Now that breaks down at scale, I completely agree, and absolutely in practice pretty much immediately, but there is certainly something there that echoes. Communal living can work at small scales with high trust (such as in a family or religious group).

I think at small scales it certainly can be.

It's as communist as it is monarchical: The legitimate head, lovingly leading, providing for and serving his family, who follow respectfully and gratefully.

Or democratic: a family taking each others concerns into account, searching for compromises between their individual desires and the needs of the moment that allow everyone to flourish.

....It seems to me that all three comparisons are backward, though. Christianity is churches, and churches are family, and families are the real thing; systems of government are the imperfect copies of them.

Acts 2:44–45 “And all that believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need

...And churches still do this today. Two chapters later, there's an example of what that actually looked like in practice:

Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?

Private property, yo.

Churches can be democratic (Quakers) or monarchical (Catholic), or at least different churches have different methods of leadership as do families.

But my point is that Marxism does have some overlap with Christianity,and just as feudalism does and so does democracy. Christianity contains within itself multitudes, and Christianity contains elements that are compatible with the divine right of kings, and elements that are compatible with Marxism and elements that are compatible with capitalism. It's probably one of the things that has made Christianity so successful as a religion. It contains Prosperity theology and ascetic Puritanism both. And it does share some teachings with Marxism.

A flattering thought if you're a member of the atheism plus crowd

It's been a while, but I remember the A+ crowd being more sympathetic to Marxism than the average person aware of the latter, if not outright communists themselves.

Marxism wasn't egalitarian when practiced, but can you substantiate the claim that it's not egalitarian in theory? After all, it's the latter that is presumably why people draw a distinction between Marxism and racism. "Communism is a nice idea in theory, but it doesn't work in practice" was the view that my final elementary school teacher took on the matter; I think it's a pretty common view and stems from the idea that Marxism is egalitarian, but egalitarianism doesn't work in practice.

Jesus telling you to love your neighbor and saying rich men won’t enter heaven isn’t at all similar to Marxism?

Not really no.

Marxism is all about class distinctions, is explicitly materialist, and rather famously "requires hate". Whereas a core tenet of Christianity is the rejection materialism and class distinctions.

If a citation is needed:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

vs

First you must ask him to what class he belongs, what his social origin is, his education and profession. These are the questions that must determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning of the Red Terror.

and saying rich men won’t enter heaven

I'm not that well read on the Bible but isn't the point of that verse to say that even the rich (seen as the most blessed) can't get into heaven without the grace of God? If the point is to say that material well-being wins you no points with God, placing so much weight on a materialist philosophy like Marxism seems to be making the same mistake in reverse.

Read Matthew 19:16 till the end of the chapter: Jesus sends some rich guy who wants to follow him away, and tells him to sell all his belongings and give it to the poor. Then he can follow him.

Material well-being doesn't only win you no points, it's an obstacle that needs to be discarded.

It was an obstacle for that rich man. It explicitly was not the same for at least one other rich man, in Luke 19:1-10.

Further, the entire idea that salvation comes down to some discrete act done or not done is antithetical to the entire message of the new testament. When Jesus talks about cutting off your hand or plucking out your eye if they cause you to sin, the point is that they don't cause you to sin. It's not your hand or eye, it's you. In the same way, it's not the money either. You can give every dime away and live the rest of your life penniless and still not find salvation.

It's about what you want. That's what Marxism gets wrong. It assumes that what people want is a product of a political system, rather than individual human will. Christianity does not assume that, and that is one of the many, many fundamental incompatibilities between the two.

By the standards of Jesus's audience, Marxism aims at making everyone rich men. Obscenely rich. It really didn't take much, by modern standards, to be "rich" in Jesus's day.

Wouldn't FdB say that Marxism is quite egalitarian?

He would, but he's also an idiot and a Marxist so not exactly the most reliable of sources.

On a per capita basis, I'll put Marxism up against the Crusades and etc. any day of the week, and people don't fire Christians either.

Ignoring for the moment the endless arguments about how many people were actually killed by Marxism vs other features of Marxist countries and their enemies, how many people are killed by capitalism and whether we're applying the same standards to those two accounting, what ideology gets the blame for the British empire and slavery and etc., I'm sure we're all sick of that debate.

Leaving all that aside, I think this idea you're applying of 'social acceptability of an ideology is/should be primarily determined by how many people it historically killed' is something you made up just now, and is neither how society ussually determines such things nor a good decision criteria to use abstractly.

Also, you know, McCarthyism, every backlash has its day in the sun.

I think this idea you're applying of 'social acceptability of an ideology is/should be primarily determined by how many people it historically killed' is something you made up just now, and is neither how society ussually determines such things nor a good decision criteria to use abstractly.

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea, but it's what I assume most people use, because if you ask them why racism is bad, they'll say it leads to human rights abuses.

because anti-racism is the highest ideal to aspire to according to political and legal elites writ large. seems obvious

Are you sure that's not backwards? Marxism is socially acceptable, therefore society accepts it (such as by allowing its tenets to be expressed by employees). Racism is not socially acceptable, therefore society doesn't accept it (such as by not allowing its tenets to be expressed by employees).

If you think that employees holding a specific view cause that view to become more socially acceptable, then could you expand on how/why?

So you think that if open Marxists were fired - or racism became a protected political belief - the two would equalise or outright invert in status/acceptability? This doesn't explain why intellectual elites in the West leaned Marxist since well before any sort of social sanction against racism materialised, or why right-coded beliefs (Gun rights? Car culture? Millenarian Christianity?) are low-status in the US even when they have no obvious connection to anything giving legal cause for termination or themselves protected.

I think the explanation is much simpler: the utopian end point of racism registers as evil against mainstream Western morality, while the utopian end point of Marxism registers as good. Doing evil for the sake of evil is just evil, but doing evil for the sake of good is at most misguided and tragic. You can dispute any of these judgments, but holding out for the One Weird Trick (abolishing workplace civil rights regulation) to let you skip the hard work of persuading people to change their moral calculus does not seem to serve much of a purpose.

I think the explanation is much simpler: the utopian end point of racism registers as evil against mainstream Western morality, while the utopian end point of Marxism registers as good.

This is a wonderfully pithy explanation. And what you say applies not just to contemporary Western morality, but to American morality from its founding. America was always a forward-looking country - a new society, a better society, a society that smiled on all men in their individual pursuits of happiness. Racialists always sought to portray their policies as being consistent with this goal - slaveowners, for example, argued that slavery was not a barbaric form of mistreatement, but a necessary process of education for the African race, and and nativists argued that immigrants were genetically incapable of learning self-government. But racialists ultimately lost, because they could not convince society that these arguments were factually correct. Not many believed that being a slave was the best way to learn. And genetic ability was (and still is) impossible to measure.

Racialists also sought argued for slavery on the grounds of material interest, and immigration restriction on simple mistrust of the other. Unlike the arguments mentioned above, these arguments have the advantage of being factually true. But ultimately they failed as well, because they were too pessimistic. Americans wanted to believe that all men could achieve prosperity, that there was no need for some men to subjugate others, and that men from all parts of the world could be assimilated and taught the American way of life.

So on one hand, Marxism is totally incompatible with the American way of life, in that it is collectivist and statist, which is why the majority has rejected it. But there has been a sizable minority, overrepresented in positions of power, who are sympathetic to Marxism because it is consistent with American optimism - the belief that we really can build a better society in which the ever-present defects of human societies can be eliminated.

This is a wonderfully pithy explanation. And what you say applies not just to contemporary Western morality, but to American morality from its founding. America was always a forward-looking country - a new society, a better society, a society that smiled on all men in their individual pursuits of happiness

Please consider this response to consist of the shortest acceptable and most polite way to plainly speak my truth of: 'Demonstrably horseshit. You are wrong. I won't go so far as to accuse you of lying but you are clearly pursuing a different agenda than the people you are so radically misrepresenting'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790

This post and this one are unnecessarily antagonistic, and we're particularly not fond of this type of post where you basically say "I know the rules don't allow me to call you a lying liar, but I really want you to understand that if I were allowed to call you a lying liar I'd be calling you a lying liar right now."

Disagree with people without testing the boundaries of how insulting you can get away with being.

"I know the rules don't allow me to call you a lying liar, but I really want you to understand that if I were allowed to call you a lying liar I'd be calling you a lying liar right now."

And if I had said that I would understand your point. But what I said was 'please consider this...the shortest acceptable...way to speak my truth...I won't...accuse you of lying but you are clearly pursuing a different agenda...'

That wasn't insulting or 'testing boundaries' - that was speaking plainly while respecting boundaries. Sometimes people say things that aren't true for all kinds of reasons. Having a rule against saying 'I don't believe you' is good for encouraging productive exchanges. But you're enforcing a rule you just made up against pointing out even the possibility of disingenuity, which would only be good for encouraging people to be disingenuous.

As for the other comment (for reference: "Double posting but your response seemed to be, frankly, in bad faith. By all means put up a quote from a prominent early 20th century socialist that purports it's a magnetic force for every lugnut, troglodyte, hardheaded, menial laboring, 9 to 5, factory man in England or at least some data on party registration by demography. "But ackshually it was working class" has negative probative value. Better not to have responded at all.")

Please, and I'm asking sincerely, explain what about this comment was antagonistic, much less unnecessarily so. "But ackshually" wasn't loving but is a widely known enough meme to reasonably be considered playful. And whether I was responding to a comment that was completely true or completely false - it was completely unsupported by evidence. "Everyone knows you're wrong because most communists were working class" was a contribution with negative probative value and it would have been better not to respond at all. I'm still eager to hear how my response was antagonistic (especially 'unnecessarily'?) - and the fact the other guy 'broke the rules' doesn't mean I didn't - but there are quite explicitly rules about low-effort participation, providing evidence, assuming consensus, and writing like everyone is reading. The undermining of the legitimate authority of those rules by my interlocutor was the premise of my response.

NB The guy did go on to provide some interesting sources that I'm still enjoying and others now can as well. So frankly your intervention wasn't just untimely it's trying to fix something that wasn't broke.

Racialists always sought to portray their policies as being consistent with this goal - slaveowners, for example, argued that slavery was not a barbaric form of mistreatement, but a necessary process of education for the African race, and and nativists argued that immigrants were genetically incapable of learning self-government. But racialists ultimately lost, because they could not convince society that these arguments were factually correct.

“Racialist” ideas were very much the mainstream worldview for nearly all Americans well up until the 1930s. The first major immigration legislation in the country’s history, the Naturalization Act of 1790, limited the granting of citizenship to “free White persons of good character”. This law was passed with overwhelming support by both houses of Congress - not just by slaveholders.

The bulk of the abolitionist movement was strongly against any insinuation of racial “equality”, and many of them opposed slavery precisely because they believed that it maintained the presence of a mass of inferior people, fundamentally incapable of productive coexistence with white Americans, within this country. The frequent jibes and insinuations that prominent slaveowners, such as Thomas Jefferson, were siring mulatto bastards with their slave women was not simply meant to portray slaveowners as hypocrites, but also to tar them with the disgusting taboo of race-mixing.

Even during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator” himself, met with a delegation of black leaders and fervently attempted to persuade them to accept the mass deportation of blacks back to Africa. The issue of “colonization” - meaning the establishment of an independent state in Africa which would receive all of the freed slaves once they were deported - had been a policy goal supported by a great many Americans, including some of the most prominent Founding Fathers, resulting in the founding of the American Colonization Society. It was logistical issues - mostly problems with funding and a few inauspicious early test voyages - which ultimately led to the underwhelming and half-assed conclusion of the project - not a widespread failure to convince ordinary Americans that “racialist” ideas were “true”. Beliefs about the inferiority of non-whites and the necessity of racial separation - especially sexual segregation - were, again, the mainstream beliefs that held overwhelming support in this country well into the 20th century.

It was top-down and very coercive efforts by the federal and state governments which forced America to racially integrate. Your story of Americans just never really buying into racialism is total bunk. You can say Americans were wrong to accept racialist ideas as common sense, but you simply can’t credibly argue that Americans as a rule have not accepted those beliefs.

It was top-down and very coercive efforts by the federal and state governments which forced America to racially integrate

I don't know about this. As the old saying goes, the Supreme Court follows the polls. This Gallup poll from 1957 found 66-33 support for school desegregation. Support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was 59-31 (ie, 65% of those expressing an opinion), and 61-28 among Whites in the North. And, of course, by 1948 both major political parties had planks in their platforms calling for federal anti-segregation legislation. That would not have happened if it did not enjoy the support of voters; appealing to voters is the whole point of a platform.

My initial comment did not describe my full thoughts correctly. Yes, you are absolutely correct - racialism was historically a significant part of America's worldview, and it was accepted by the great majority of the public. My argument is that racialism existed in tension with egalitarianism/universalism, but egalitarianism was bound to prevail because it was in more in line with our nation's optimistic mindset. For example, regarding the Negro Question:

Public opinion (in the North) in the early 1800s: blacks and whites can not coexist as equal citizens; slavery is distasteful but not out of the ordinary.

in the mid 1800s: people still believe that equality is not possible, but slavery is now seen as unethical rather than natural, and it should be contained.

mid 1800s to 1930s: a shift from opposition to any kind of equality, to support for legal, but not social equality (i.e. fair trials in courtrooms, but no integration of schools).

1940s to 1960s: a shift towards supporting legal and social equality.

So yes, racialism has been accepted by the public for much of America's history. But a clear trajectory can be seen, in which racialism recedes and society becomes more egalitarian.

A similar tension existed for immigration, and feminism, and more recently, LGBT acceptance. Yet in all of these cases, the racialists/the right lost, despite many of their arguments being factually correct, and obviously true, because the idealistic side of the American character won out.

It was top-down and very coercive efforts by the federal and state governments which forced America to racially integrate.

True, but that does not disprove my point. Both elite opinion and public opinion have shifted leftwards over time; the elites have been a decade or three ahead of the public in this regard, and have used force to expedite liberalization. For both elites and the public, the cause of the leftward shift has been the same: the idealistic, optimistic mindset of the American people.

Communism might be responsible for more deaths than the Holocaust but all historical forms of racism put together are probably responsible for more deaths than communism. Not that it really matters. Probably the main reason why communism is more socially acceptable than racism is that communism seems more well-intentioned than racism. Communism mainly hates people for things that they can change about themselves (being rich, being capitalists, being landlords, etc.), whereas racism hates people for things they can't change about themselves. Also, whereas communists claim to fight for an unprecedented better world, racists have nothing new to promise because the world has seen plenty of racism before. It's old hat and does not have any air of novelty around it.

Communism mainly hates people for things that they can change about themselves (being rich, being capitalists, being landlords, etc.), whereas racism hates people for things they can't change about themselves.

This is why communism is worse than racism. Hating people for their virtues is worse than hating people for morally neutral properties like race.

If you're going to present the least charitable take of what communists hate it would behoove you to match it with a similarly uncharitable take of what racists hate. Which isn't "just morally neutral properties". You could start by claiming islamophobes hate Muslims because Muslims are better at reproducing, or that antisemites hate Jews because Jews are better at mostly everything.

Just about the core moral tenet of communism is that owning wealth is not a virtue, and that capitalists didn't earn it by being virtuous, either.

Communism might be responsible for more deaths than the Holocaust but all historical forms of racism put together are probably responsible for more deaths than communism.

I've been reliably informed by modern day whiteness studies scholars that racism cannot take place without white people, and "white people" were only invented as a concept in the 17th century. As such, the brutal and in many cases explicitly ethnically based conflicts of the past don't actually have anything to do with racism per se, so I don't think racism would actually have that high of a bodycount.

This is mostly just a boo-outgroup post. Don't do this please.

If there is anywhere left on planet earth that this conversation can be had, it's probably here. So I'm going to try. Let's take this as four separate assertions as see how they match up to what I will reluctantly call reality:

Communism mainly hates people for things that they can change about themselves (being rich, being capitalists, being landlords, etc.)

The Tsar could change the fact that he was the Tsar, but not the fact that he was born the Tsaritsyn. Communism did not demand his death because he refused to abdicate. He, and his entire family, including his infant children, had to die because of what they could not change about themselves. Namely, being more intelligent, more attractive, or born in any way with unequal (and from communism's perspective, unearned) advantage.

whereas racism hates people for things they can't change about themselves.

This is a 4-year-old's understanding of racism from sesame street in the 90's (the only time I can speak to as it's the only time I watched (growing up)). You are not in any way shape or form describing the modal "racist." The modal racist hates, for example:

  • Being raised in a country founded or dominated by a race other than their own

  • Experiencing discrimination as a child because of their race

  • Repeated negative exposures to particular behaviors exhibited by subgroups of a race

And I won't bother going on because you (the reader) gets my point. "I hate X because they're X" is an invention of Hollywood.

Also, whereas communists claim to fight for an unprecedented better world

A better world for...whom? Only the very highest climbers, the one in ten thousand factory-worker-to-party-boss types, aren't worse off under communism than before. Because communists openly claim to fight for a world in which people like me and my family are murdered, and our homes and properties are given to people without any capacity or experience for proper care of either.

racists have nothing new to promise because the world has seen plenty of racism before.

When was the last time anyone, in any position of any authority in the West, said something like "we'd expect fewer black people to qualify for xyz, that doesn't automatically mean the qualifications are unfair." Truly, I'm curious. Tom Buchannan was portrayed as a pigheaded racist 100 years ago

The Tsar could change the fact that he was the Tsar, but not the fact that he was born the Tsaritsyn. Communism did not demand his death because he refused to abdicate. He, and his entire family, including his infant children, had to die because of what they could not change about themselves. Namely, being more intelligent, more attractive, or born in any way with unequal (and from communism's perspective, unearned) advantage.

The Tsar and his family were hardly representative of people killed by Russian communists, being the leadership and obvious figurehead at the head of a social structure that was the most credible force opposed to the communists. To say that they were killed for being more intelligent and attractive is as disingenuous as saying that American capitalism killed Osama bin Laden for being more intelligent, eloquent and charismatic. If you want to argue for communists actually killing people on grounds of innate superiority, at least reach for an example like the Khmer Rouge (who enjoy far less modern approval than most other self-proclaimedly communist movements).

The modal racist hates, for example (...)

Your modal racist sounds like a caricature of someone who has trouble with grasping golden-rule ethics.

Perfectly fair point given how I organized the sentence; it should have been:

Namely, being born in any way with unequal (and from communism's perspective, unearned) advantage, such as being more intelligent or more attractive.

In this case the Tsar's 'unearned' advantage obviously being his circumstances of royal birth rather than his dashing good looks

The modal racist hates, for example:

Being raised in a country founded or dominated by a race other than their own Experiencing discrimination as a child because of their race Repeated negative exposures to particular behaviors exhibited by subgroups of a race

This is an explanation of why racists hate members of certain groups. But, do you have empirical evidence for this claim? It certainly does not seem to explain the existence of racists in the past, and of course it ignores the extent to which outgroup antipathy is normal, and of course it ignores the role of socialization.

The Tsar could change the fact that he was the Tsar, but not the fact that he was born the Tsaritsyn. Communism did not demand his death because he refused to abdicate. He, and his entire family, including his infant children, had to die because of what they could not change about themselves. Namely, being more intelligent, more attractive, or born in any way with unequal (and from communism's perspective, unearned) advantage.

Not necessarily. Puyi wasn't executed and died a regular citizen of the PRC. Nicholas could've survived as well, but he ended up too close to the frontline of the civil war.

Puyi is a fair counterexample, thanks for bringing him up. He'd be interesting to learn more about sometime

A better world for...whom? Only the very highest climbers, the one in ten thousand factory-worker-to-party-boss types, aren't worse off under communism than before.

Other way around. It's only the one in ten thousand who's currently exploiting the rest who will be worse off under communism; without them everyone else will be either around where they already are or better off.

The people who believe this may not be correct, but it's what they believe and are fighting for: a better world for everyone except those with unearned privileges. They certainly don't believe they're fighting for a world where 9,999 people out of 10k are going to be worse off.

Other way around. It's only the one in ten thousand who's currently exploiting the rest who will be worse off under communism; without them everyone else will be either around where they already are or better off.

This does not pass muster; communism does not suggest that only one in ten thousand people are exploitative. One in ten is closer to the truth but a compelling argument could be made for even more.

I used it as a mirror to your own number.

But it's not the 'other way around' if it's a false equivalence? Communists clearly and explicitly advocate for murdering far more than one in ten thousand people? I'm confused what our miscommunication is here

a better world for everyone except those with unearned privileges. They certainly don't believe they're fighting for a world where 9,999 people out of 10k are going to be worse off.

This is a contradiction in terms. They know those people are going to be worse off; they're OK with that as they believe those people deserve it ("unearned privileges" has taken literally every form under the sun already).

I'm not a communist and I'm not trying to defend communism. I'm pretty well aware of its failings. I'm explaining why communism is widely viewed as more moral than racism.

You were describing how things 'seemed' - which I pretty much entirely agreed with. It does seem like communism desires milk and honey and racists are all dumb and ugly, etc. But none of that makes for particularly evocative conversation - our entire lives are steeped in it everyday.

It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.

California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.

It all adds up.

This is actually a good example for why Hanania's case is overstated. Civil Rights law doesn't explain the behavior of Jews in enshrining their war-era mythos as the most important event in world history. You should read Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique to appreciate that these laws and social collective consciousnesses are also themselves downstream of the latent tendencies of people and not just laws that exogenously drop from the ether.

I of course agree that culture is influenced by politics, with Civil Rights law being a good example, but to say that public perception of fascism compared to communism is due to California state law is an example of Hanania's case failing to generalize to extremely important cultural movements that are the wellspring of what we now call "woke" ideology.

I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.

I would question Marxism being more socially acceptable than racism. Maybe in a blue tribe bubble, but there’s also bubbles which are the opposite.

I think the real question, instead, is ‘why are the blue tribe pinkos’, and that’s because 1) the Soviet Union spent decades and millions of dollars on infiltrating the western intelligentsia and 2) because Marxism is just uniquely designed to appeal to intellectuals lacking in specific knowledge, particularly intellectuals who don’t themselves work very hard. That’s what Marx was, basically, and it’s more or less an oversystematization of the view of someone in that position- workers(who produce things) work for owner-men who provide access to capital, so wouldn’t it make more sense to just do away with the owner-men and have the workers as a collective own the capital? That’s a nice idea, if you’ve never been on either side of that relationship. And if you have it’s probably tough to explain how the workers benefit from not owning their own capital. And, you know, the blue tribe mostly does things which might be valuable, but which are at remove from actual production. Hence Marxism feels true to an HR lady or a college professor or a journalist in a way it doesn’t to a mechanic or a farmer or a plumber.

This explanation doesn't track for me. In practice most nominally communist nations got their start on the backs of a huge stock of peasant farmers, not HR departments.

In America, the unionized working class were highly sympathetic to socialist ideals for a long while. It's only relatively recently that this has changed.

In America, the unionized working class were highly sympathetic to socialist ideals for a long while. It's only relatively recently that this has changed.

and

Hence Marxism feels true to an HR lady or a college professor or a journalist in a way it doesn’t to a mechanic or a farmer or a plumber.

And in most of the times and places where Marxism was a real political movement that threatened to take power, this was even more true (China is an exception). The Bolshevik power base really was the urban working class and the enlisted men of the Petrograd garrison. The German SDP really was a movement of industrial workers organised through unions. So was the French Socialist Party. So was the (not technically Marxist) British Labour Party. These movements were mostly led by educated men, but that was inevitable. And they actively sought to identify educate smart workingmen and incorporate them into leadership. Friedrich Ebert began his career as a saddle-maker. Keir Hardie was a miner.

21st century PMC Marxism is a LARP - most modern Marxists don't believe in, or even understand, the economic core of Marxism. Most of them run around denouncing slavery as an incident of capitalism, for crissake. But orthodox Marxism absolutely felt true to the mechanics and plumbers (not, admittedly, the farmers) of its day.

because Marxism is just uniquely designed to appeal to intellectuals lacking in specific knowledge, particularly intellectuals who don’t themselves work very hard

Yes, the kinds of people who fancy themselves in the role of chief central planner are friendly to a system that would give them the power to do that. (Everyone else is correct when they call them on this.)

I would question Marxism being more socially acceptable than racism.

Outright racist behavior is absolutely socially acceptable today; where it is most acceptable (in Blue tribe bubbles) it is overwhelmingly acceptable, and unless you venture into alt-Red bubbles it's not acceptable in most Red ones either because they're stuck in the time period when racism stopped being acceptable. (Newer Reds don't usually understand what racism was because they come from parents and grandparents that broke the machine that made the old kind of racism work; of course, doing that gave rise to the new kind of racism that, progressives being progressive, would be first in line to adopt.)

it’s probably tough to explain how the workers benefit from not owning their own capital

The answer to that is trivial- insulation from risk. Workers hate hearing that, of course, but (corruption of self-interest aside) a good chunk of them are either unwilling (risk tolerance is a personality trait, so is laziness) or unable (insufficient g; you have to be skilled labor to escape being a worker, and you also need some capital to bootstrap it) to free themselves from the cycle of work.

The reason Communism gets popular with the late 19th-mid 20th century working class is that the ratio of "risk and effort by worker" and "risk and effort by capital" was a lot more skewed against the former at that time period due to the dominant professions being either resource extraction or sweatshop and a correspondingly huge demand for those things... making the worker's assessment of capital's risk more accurate. Add the fact that automaton jobs like those tend to exacerbate certain issues with bad management and suddenly "the people doing all the work should own the place" starts to look a lot more attractive.

Hence Marxism feels true to an HR lady or a college professor or a journalist in a way it doesn’t to a mechanic or a farmer or a plumber.

The former professions are exclusively the insulated-from-risk types (they are as much UBI in 2020 as the average sit-down-and-sew or show-up-and-swing-the-hammer-or-sickle position was in 1920) and the latter professions tend not to be that way to the same degree, so I think that explains most of it.

Whether they actually produce anything is not relevant to how they feel.

I would question Marxism being more socially acceptable than racism. Maybe in a blue tribe bubble, but there’s also bubbles which are the opposite.

I think the real question, instead, is

No wait, don't tell me what the "real" question is, if you want to interrogate whether or not Marxism isn't more socially acceptable, let's do that. I think there are pretty clear asymmetries clearly showing that Marxism, and other forms of left-wing extremism are a lot more acceptable. Since this is a Hanania thread, let's take him as an example. The Huffington Post dug out his old pseudonymous posts, presumably in an attempt to get him excluded from "respectable" centrist to left-of-center discourse. Please find me *a single example* where someone goes looking for old pseudonymous Marxists posts, in order to get someone excluded from "respectable" centrist right-of-center discourse.

The disparity in how these cases are treated is so massive, that I find your proposition absurd. Current and open Marxists are welcome with open arms in right-wing discourse, as long as they offer any criticism of the modern left at all.

Notably, everyone knew that the Bush-era neocons had mostly been communists in their youth, and nobody held it against them.

I grew up in a conservative rural area, and even there being a Marxist may make you stupid and naive, but being a racist makes you evil. Explicitly anti-immigration conservatives will often go to great lengths to distance themselves from anyone who has ever said something that could be interpreted as racist, in a way that urban progressives would never think about with their Marxist brethren. In a 100% conservative org a single video of drunken teenage you saying "blacks are inferior" can easily be enough to get you kicked out, while you can offer a talk on abolishing capitalism (and the police, and everything else you don't like) at university without anyone even batting an eye.

Maybe America is different, but at least here in Germany the number of people who either self-identify as racist or tolerate self-identifying racists in their orgs is a rounding error. Even the far-right AfD doesn't actually consider racism acceptable. People may disagree on the exact definition of racism, but they generally agree on central examples such as Nazis being evil.

This doesn't really account for Marxism being extremely popular with manual laborers in Europe for decades.

You're probably already familiar with the Orwell quote but for those who might not be, in 1936 George Orwell declared that "socialism draws toward it with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England."

Which would suggest that socialism has not fundamentally changed it's 'magnetic force' over the last century away from manual labor and toward the sandal-wearers, sex-maniacs, and fruit-juice drinkers it continues attracting today.

The Marxist parties (communist and social democratic together) commanded a solid majority of working class support in most European countries up through the middle of the 20th century.

Double posting but your response seemed to be, frankly, in bad faith. By all means put up a quote from a prominent early 20th century socialist that purports it's a magnetic force for every lugnut, troglodyte, hardheaded, menial laboring, 9 to 5, factory man in England or at least some data on party registration by demography. "But ackshually it was working class" has negative probative value. Better not to have responded at all.

This set of Piketty slides show that the correlation between education and voting behaviour changes sign over the 2nd half of the 20th century. He looks at France, the UK and the US, with and without controlling for income. The big left-wing parties in the UK and France were explicitly socialist or communist for most of this period, so you can't say "the working class may have been left-wing in the past, but they were never socialist".

You can also look at the political affiliation of blue-collar unions back when they were a big deal, which was consistently leftist, and in Continental Europe (but not the Anglosphere) was more often than not explicitly Marxist.

For the French Communist Party, see for instance this:

In Meurthe-et-Moselle, all the members of the governing body of the party(secre´tariat fe´de´ral) from 1944 to 1979 came from blue-collar classes, with theexception of a teacher and an industrial draughtsman promoted at the end ofthe 1950s.4The predominance of workers increased in the higher echelons ofparty hierarchy: the higher the level of the organisation, the higher the numberof militants from blue-collar backgrounds. In 1962, blue-collar militants madeup 53 per cent of the comite´fe´de´ral in Loire-Atlantique, and 60 per cent in thebureau fe´de´ral and the secre´tariat fe´de´ral overall. The dominant position ofworkers from heavy industries and of those with a protected status (railwayworkers, civil service workers, gas and electrical operators and so on) in theparty hierarchy can be observed everywhere, including in rural regions likeAllier. In this area, where rural populations – notably peasants – stronglysupported the PCF, Party leadership was in fact composed mostly by militantsfrom urban industries (who are often from peasants families).

Or this:

Their survey took these results further. The right-wing vote was higher among people who practiced a religion. The left-wing vote increased depending on the degree of integration in the working class as measured by the number of working-class connections or attributes possessed (being a worker oneself, having a working-class father or spouse, etc.). It went from 18% amongst women who were without any connection to 55% for workers whose fathers were also workers. The effects of “objective” social class were seen to combine with those of the “subjective” social class, i.e. the class individuals feel they belong to.12 Identification with the working class increased with the number of working class attributes.

For Finland, check this long study, specifically page 60 (printed numbers). Here's the specific table showing that in 1948 and 1966 70-75% of worker voters voted for Social Democrats (SDP) and Communists (SKDL) combined, with over 30 % of this vote going the SKDL. A table below shows that ca 80% of SKDL voters were workers in those elections, and as late as 1988 SKDL's support base was almost 70% worker.

This doesn't conflict with the Orwell quote - the European big communist parties still attracted freaky-deaky types, but they only formed a small minority in those parties compared to blue-collar lugnut jockeys, while they were considerably more important internally for Anglo Communist parties that lacked a similar mass base of worker support.

Thank you very much for this! Always happy to learn something new. Particularly enjoying poking through that Finnish study

The mining and industrial regions in the northern UK have been called the Red Wall because they consistently voted Labour for so long, until within the past decade.

There's also the similar 'Red Belt' in France, centered around the former heavy industry heart of the country, which voted for a long time not only socialist, but communist.

Wedding, the one-time working class slum of Berlin was known as 'Red Wedding' in the interwar years, because it was a communist stronghold.

In Spain, in 1934, several thousand socialist-communist miners stormed the city of Oviedo, torched a bunch of churches, shot a dozen priests, declared a 'soviet republic,' and fought the army for two weeks to protest the entry of a right-wing party into the government.

Thanks for this, appreciate it

(1) Calling the British Labour party a "Marxist" party is stretching the word absurdly far. Yes, they were social democratic. Yes, social democracy was partly inspired by Marxist ideas. That doesn't make the British Labour party into a Marxist party. The Communist Party of Great Britain never won more than a few seats in Britain.

(2) "Extremely popular" is a vague phrase, but unless you mean just "popular by the standards of communist parties," I wouldn't say that French communism was "extremely popular" among the working classes of France. A single region where they did well in municipal elections doesn't prove that. Nor a single communist electoral stronghold in Berlin. Similarly for Czechoslovak communism, which you didn't mention but which did have some electoral success in competitive elections.

Nobody is disputing that there were working-class communists and that communists had some electoral successes in Europe. That's a fine motte to retreat to. However, the original claim was "This doesn't really account for Marxism being extremely popular with manual laborers in Europe for decades." (emphasis added) Can you defend that claim?

Calling the British Labour Party a "Marxist" party is stretching the word absurdly far.

The British Labour Party was never a Marxist party, but it self-identified as socialist, was committed to seeking "common ownership of the means of production" by Clause 4 of the Party Constitution, and did in fact nationalise the country's largest companies after gaining power in 1945. At the point Orwell complained about the lifestyle weirdness of "socialists", he was a member of the Independent Labour Party, one of those weird far-left groupuscles the British like so much, because he did not consider the Labour Party properly socialist. So he was writing about the lifestyle habits of the weird far-left, which has always been much more middle-class than the electorally serious left.

The quote is taken from The Road to Wigan Pier, which was a polemical book trying to get the Marxist left in Britain to get the stick out of their backside and compete for working class votes. Less than a year after writing the book, Orwell would travel to Spain to fight for the Nationalists. Foreign fighters were assigned to International Brigades based on the Spanish political party their home-country party was affiliated with. The Spanish left-wing group whose militia Orwell joined based on his ILP membership was POUM, which was a heavily working-class movement - it was led by an autodictat journalist from a working-class family and a union organiser.

Calling the British Labour party a "Marxist" party is stretching the word absurdly far.

Labour was an explicitly socialist party for decades. The plank calling for the socialization of industry/property was only removed, I think in the 80s or 90s. The communists didn't think they were hardcore enough and wanted violent revolution now, but that doesn't change the party's ideals in its early years. This was even more true of the Second International parties on the continent like the SPD, the SFIO, and especially the PSOE. Do you deny those parties were very popular with the working classes of their respective countries?

I said "marxism" not "communism" and explicitly identified both the social democratic and comintern-affiliated communist parties, because it's true that the latter alone never commanded a majority of working class support in European countries. Though they still did pretty good. The PCF got 15% of the vote in national elections France in 1936 (calling the red belt 'a single region' underrates it. It was the French equivalent of communists dominating the US industrial regions in the great lakes in the 50s). The KPD got 17% of the vote in Germany in 1932, especially from unemployed workers.

More comments

That's a historical path dependency thing and you can tell because of the way the working class majority has moved away from Marxism.

The working class was attracted to left wing parties of all sorts in the 19th century. Over the course of that century and into the 20th, Marxism slowly won an internal power struggle amongst the left wing parties and factions of many countries. Even those which maintained a non-Marxist policy bent often adopted Marxist language and trappings (if only formally -- see: the Social Democratic parties in Scandinavia, who were never interested in actually going through with a Marxist revolution but often put Marxist goals in their platforms early on).

As the Cold War heated up, this started to drop away. Social Democrats started to explicitly and consciously disassociate from Marxism, many transformed over time into more or less social liberal, welfare capitalist parties as the big state post-war consensus fell apart, and now much of their voting base has switched sides to right-wing or conservative populist parties.

Okay, with what level of veracity should I approach that assertion?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats