domain:pedestrianobservations.com
2rafa
1m ago
It’s more about the situation in which 3 would occur, namely near-total loss of US support, an increasingly Muslim Europe, China and Russia signing onto sanctions to appease Muslim allies like Pakistan and Iran, and then relatively quickly almost the whole world is against them, the US for residual world peace reasons forces them into this quasi peace, and then maybe Turkey or another coalition of Arab nations decide that it’s just time for the killing blow, there’s a mass Palestinian uprising of the kind that didn’t occur on October 7th etc…
orthoxerox
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3m ago
In case of Russia, they don't. That's why they introduced a new "self-employed" status a few years ago with much lower taxes on income to incentivize people to report their cake baking and pipe fixing and dunce tutoring. (It's different with the farmers since they don't really sell grain to individuals and mill that buy it from them provide the record of buying it.) But the self-employed are small fish and it's not worth it to personally hunt down every single one of them.
The next set of carrot and stick that will be used to ensure compliance is probably government-run crypto. It's easy to inject it into the economy: social security of every kind. All transactions using them will be 100% transparent to the government.
MayorofOysterville
3m ago
They managed to create a permanent peace with Syria and Egypt even with the Golan heights and no peace agreement and the West Bank has towns under full Palestinian control. I think a State of Palestine would be a lot less likely to just start a war then stateless terrorist groups.
MayorofOysterville
6m ago
But they haven't yet been able to expel the population and I don't know if they realistically can. So far they've just been settling the gaps and ignoring the Palestinian settlements but this doesn't seem stable.
2rafa
7m ago
I think Israel will change behavior if that happens and act / beg for scenario 3, but as I said, there are many routes by which that leads to scenario 2 anyway.
MayorofOysterville
9m ago
I don't think 3 has any chance of turning into 2. Even with the 1948 borders the Israeli military would still massively outclass the Palestinian one.
OliveTapenade
15m ago
My understanding, roughly, is that classical Marxism, to the extent that it acknowledges patriarchy as a concept at all, holds that patriarchy and gender-based oppression are downstream of economic class. The father and husband holds power in a way derivative of his position in the economic system. As such any attempt to solve the patriarchy problem or liberate women that does not engage with capitalism is doomed to fail. The liberation of women is, insofar as it goes, a good thing, and a component of the overall class struggle, but it is subordinate to that struggle and must not be separated out from it.
Today I don't think there is an ideologically coherent 'mainline Feminism'. I think that feminism today is an extraordinarily contested label that is riven by internal strife, and as such it is very hard to generalise about a doctrinaire feminist position on anything. There are some obvious fault lines (pro-porn vs anti-porn, pro-trans vs anti-trans, pro-choice vs pro-life, and in general radical/separatist vs accomodationalist/assimilationist), but they are often mixed up and not immensely predictive of any individual's position. If I were to generalise, I would say that what makes a person or position 'feminist' today is 1) it is primarily interested in the position of women in society, and 2) it holds that women, as group or class, are in some way disadvantaged, and some sort of collective action is necessary to ameliorate those disadvantages.
Within that broad heading, there are both Marxist and non-Marxist feminists, and the line can be blurry. Moreover, because Marx is such a massively influential figure in the history of sociology, philosophy, etc., if you search for traces of Marxism in almost any school of social analysis, you're going to find some. I think it's fair to say that it is reasonably common to find bits or pieces from the wider Marxist tradition in most feminist schools of thought today - but which pieces, and how consequential they are, will vary widely.
I would not generalise that modern, mainline feminists consider their critique to be a refinement of Marxism. I think that most academic feminists, if questioned, will grant that there is some Marxist influence on their thought - but that most will not see that thought as decisive, and most do not think of themselves as working in a Marxist school, or as part of the Marxist tradition. I'd guess that just as classical Marxists think of the class structure of society and the economic mode of production as the umbrella issues, and everything else as derivative, academic feminists today tend to take gender as the umbrella issue, and see economics as downstream of that. For them Marx is an important historical figure working in a related field, whose insights are sometimes but not universally applicable to their own analyses.
Eetan
18m ago
It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could be persuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause.
Grim story. Now, let me add the necessary context to understand it, and it would be time and place where it happened.
It was late 1944 in Nazi occupied Hungary.
In this context, choosing to join underground resistance group was choosing to die for the cause, soon and often in rather unpleasant way, and it was clear to everyone.
Nothing "marxist" or "materialist" about this particular case, staunch Christian anticommunist Polish resistance would also execute their members at the slight suspicion they are compromised and endanger the group as a whole. These are rules of actual guerilla resistance against serious and determined enemy.
orthoxerox
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19m ago
lagrangian
26m ago
the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews.
very much the opposite in my social circle. (I'm jewish). There's a lot of "we still don't like Trump, but the left hates Israel, so we'll put up with him" - pithily captured as "Jews went to bed October 6th as Democrats - but woke up Republican"
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
43m ago
Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.
This isn't the first time I've had this discussion on here, but I think you're not just right, you're understating the problem they face. Who is going to be the next imperial patron for Israel? They can't exist without one without a severe reduction in social complexity, and I don't see Russia (currently engaging in deep military co-operation with their greatest adversary) stepping up to the plate. China has absolutely no need to sponsor Israel and they're not going to be vulnerable to the same strategies that worked on America and the broader west. Who's left? India?
They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Having better weapons makes you the bad guy? When the Americans fought Nazi Germany, the Americans had way more bombs and planes than the Germans did. Does that mean the Americans were big meanies, or does it mean the Nazis shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win?
Palestine supporters do this all the time, and it's never persuasive. Israel fires more bombs, Israel kills more people, as if these are bad things to do in a war. Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.
Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet! How can you set the bar for too many casualties in a war below the number required to win? You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
48m ago
I in no way meant to imply that life as a minority was a land of milk and honey for the jews in the arab world - but when they have spent over a thousand years suffering those abuses and managed to maintain their own cultural and ethnic identity during that time, you're being a bit misleading when you say that those abuses are why there aren't any jews left in the rest of the region.
jkf
1hr ago
It's still not really walkable -- although I think now there's literally condo towers right on top of it, so I guess if you were in one of those it would work. Otherwise it's several blocks from anywhere people really live. (and of course those towers are not great for going places other than Costco -- or the hockey arena I guess)
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
I'm saying that it's a mistake to identify the critical theory of wokism with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.
Would it also be a mistake to identify the socialist theory of Trotsky with the Socialist theory of Stalin? (Or that of Kamenev and Stalin, or Zinoviev and Stalin, or Bukharin and Stalin, or...)
...I submit that Marxism is best understood as a bundle of critiques of society emerging from a particular worldview. Beyond those worldview-clustered critiques, Marxism contains no actual, gears-level insight or plan for fixing society beyond "amass absolute power and use it tear down this society and build a much better one in its place". If you are tracking ideological descent, you should track it through the worldview, the critique cluster, and the prescription of amassing and wielding absolute power. These are the constants of Marxist thought.
The non-gears-level theoretical confections layered atop by Marx and his feuding successors are best understood as superstructure, epiphenomena. Lenin gutted much of Marx's own theoretical constructs to carry out the Russian Revolution, and no one cared because he maintained the constants of perspective, critique, and seizure of power, and he won. The Russian Revolutionaries who followed him themselves contained great diversity of thought and and many beautiful theoretical elaborations, until Stalin culled them all by hueing to the constants of Perspective, Critique, and seizure of power, and no one cared because he also won. Mao likewise diverged greatly from Marx, Lenin and Stalin, and yet he stuck to the basics, and he also won and so was recognized, at least initially, as a Real Marxist.
Consider the idea that Marxism does not actually contain actionable insight into the human condition or the proper ordering of a peaceful, prosperous society. Because of this lack, people attempting even minimally to engage with the human condition or build such a society in the real world quickly find themselves having to make shit up. Then if their improvisations work, they must have Really Understood Marx, and if they fail, clearly they were heterodox and benighted, at least by everyone within reach of the winner.
You may be correct that all the Frankfurt School and modern Social Justice share is a rhetorical commitment to communism, and you may be correct that in both cases, that commitment is fake. When in the history of the ideology has it been otherwise?
aaa
1hr ago
How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???
Israel needs western support to exist. Europe is going to become very muslim (and also very failed) in the next 100 years. In the US support for israel rests on three pillars: jews, defense contractors and red heifer evangelicals. The evangelicals are dying, the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews. On the other hand jews map to white and palestinians map to brown in the woke mind.
Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.
Supah_Schmendrick
1hr ago
How bastardized does a theoretical development have to be before it can be considered an entirely different thing?
Depends on whether you take a genealogical (A taught B, who was read and cited by C, who taught D...) vs. taxonomic approach. Both have their strengths and weaknesses; both capture something useful and real about the world but have blind spots.
The current theory of the American Left doesn't draw much from the Frankfurt School or any thinkers really; to the extent it exists at all, it's just a ramshackle gloss on patronage politics with a couple academic shibboleths to give it an air of legitimacy.
One could certainly say the same of Mormonism vis a vis the early Christian church fathers...or indeed wokism vis a vis the early church fathers. But there are clear historical and sociological lineages there as well.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.
They had the opportunity to, but didn't. Just off the top of my head, Critical Race Theory kicked off around the time of the Civil Rights Act, and was indistinguishable from BLM from the start. I'm less sure of it, but I think even some of the people who developed it studied directly under the major figures of the Frabkfurt School.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
Yes, and that is why the people we are calling Cultural Marxists have engaged in a protracted and highly public campaign to, among many other things, put black people in charge of art, universities, and "etc". Surely you are aware of this campaign, the explicit arguments forwarded for its necessity and its many notable and expensive foibles?
What is your actual argument here? You appear to be quoting newspaper headlines as examples of ridiculous things that obviously haven't happened.
ThenElection
1hr ago
I'm saying that it's a mistake to identify the critical theory of wokism with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The major figures of the Frankfurt School would reject wokism--ideologically and aesthetically, and in particular its focus on consumerist identity.
The only major thing they do share (at least, if we don't want to group together a lot of wildly disparate approaches) is a rhetorical commitment to communism, and in both cases that commitment is fake.
I would like to cross post this excerpt about the mathematician Imre Lakatos, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
In Nagyvárad Lakatos restarted his Marxist group. The co-leader was his then-girlfriend and subsequent wife, Éva Révész. In May, the group was joined by Éva Izsák, a 19-year-old Jewish antifascist activist who needed lodgings with a non-Jewish family. Lakatos decided that there was a risk that she would be captured and forced to betray them, hence her duty, both to the group and to the cause, was to commit suicide. A member of the group took her across country to Debrecen and gave her cyanide (Congden 1997, Long 2002, Bandy 2009, ch. 5). To lovers of Russian literature, the episode recalls Dostoevsky’s The Possessed/Demons (based in part on the real-life Nechaev affair). In Dostoevsky’s novel the anti-Tsarist revolutionary, Pyotr Verkhovensky, posing as the representative of a large revolutionary organization, tries to solidify the provincial cell of which he is the chief by getting the rest of group to share in the murder of a dissident member who supposedly poses a threat to the group. (It does not work for the fictional Pytor Verkhovensky and it did work for the real-life Sergei Nechaev.) Hence the title of Congden’s 1997 exposé: “Possessed: Imre Lakatos’s Road to 1956”. But to communists or former communists of Lakatos’s generation, it recalled a different book: Chocolate, by the Bolshevik writer Aleksandr Tarasov-Rodianov. This is a stirring tale of revolutionary self-sacrifice in which the hero is the chief of the local Cheka (the forerunner of the KGB). Popular in Hungary, it encouraged a romantic cult of revolutionary ruthlessness and sacrifice in its (mostly) youthful readers. As one of Lakatos’s contemporaries, György Magosh put it,
How that book inspired us. How we longed to be professional revolutionaries who could be hanged several times a day in the interest of the working class and of the great Soviet Union (Bandy 2009: 31).
It was in that spirit, that the ardent young Marxist, Éva Izsák, could be persuaded that it was her duty to kill herself for the sake of the cause.
Though his research program is interesting and in spite of previously defending art by question artists, I now fear such ideas as memetic viruses cast evil people. How can we verify a communist correctly described the sky as blue, might it not be grey or beautiful and pink? I marvel at just how much we should throw out.
Ioper
1hr ago
There is a little bit of that but giving it to trump also seems very premature, especially given his other proclivities.
aqouta
1hr ago
They lived in those areas as a persecutes minorities under, ironically given the acurrent asaccusations, appartide conditions. Subjected to additional taxes, exclusion from official positions, lesser status under the law and the occasional pogrom. There are some few contested incidents like the 1950s Baghdad bombings but many many more straightforward incidents like the Egyptian denationalization and mass asset seizures of jews across the region. The idea that the push factors compeling jews to move to Israel from the middle east were largely fabricated is ahistorical. Certainly Israel wanted to entice jews to move there and sure up their numbers but the woes of the jews across the region were very real.
The motte is Marxists caring about culture, which obviously they have done throughout history. The Soviet Union is just one famous example.
The bailey is the much less defensible claim that "wokism is the bastard child of communism" - this kind of 'cultural Marxism' is a much larger, more complicated narrative about how intersectionality, modern progressive thought, etc., derive from a complex chain of descent from Marxism.
This claim comes around with some frequency, and has always left me quite confused as to where exactly such a view emerges from.
From your understanding, what is the doctrinaire Marxist view on, say, feminism as an ideological/philosophical system?
My understanding is that doctrinaire Marxism had no room for Feminism as such; class conflict was the problem and the solution, and the future classless society would provide seamless, perfectly egalitarian solutions for existing conflicts between the sexes with no need for further analysis or theoretical constructions. My impression of the attempts to implement Marxism likewise believed this, even as they often implemented, for example, what from a feminist perspective would be considered large-scale rape culture, exploitation and repression of women in their societies.
Likewise, from your understanding, what is the mainline Feminist view of Marxism as an ideological/philosophical system?
My understanding is that mainline Feminists consider Marx enormously influential to their critique of society and its discontents, but believe their ideological/theoretical model is an application and refinement of Marxist social critique, and that as a refinement, their movement's distinctive perspectives and prescriptions should be prioritized over the older, cruder, pure-class-conflict marxist view.
It seems to me that the above two descriptions are accurate for central examples of Doctrinaire Marxist and Feminist thinking respectively, and that both the fundamental relationship and fundamental conflict between them is undeniable. This old comment provides concrete examples of the phenomena both from popular appeals to academia, and from within academia itself; I'd be interested in whether you think I'm engaging with a Motte and Bailey there, and if so how. The dénouement to that post seems evergreen:
It seems obvious to me that the various branches of Social Justice theory are, to a first approximation, direct descendants of Marxism. It seems obvious to me that a supermajority of the people promulgating Social Justice theory believe that they are performing some combination of extending, expanding, or (for the truly arrogant) correcting Marxism, quite explicitly. I think the above position can be defended unassailably by looking at the academic output that constitutes the headwaters of the Social Justice movement. I think that those who argue that the obvious, inescapable ties between Social Justice theory and Marxism are some sort of hallucination or sloppy categorization are either woefully uninformed or actively dishonest. To those who have advanced such arguments in the thread on the subject below, I offer an invitation: assuming the above examples are insufficient, what level of evidence would satisfy you? How many papers from how many journals do you need to see? How many quotes from how many prominent figures within the modern social justice movement, and the people who taught them, and the people who taught them, and so on? How far back do we need to go to satisfy you? How deep do we need to dig to bring this question to a conclusion?
(And it's a genetic fallacy anyway, but that's a whole separate issue. Suffice to say that I think wokism is wrong, but it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of this or that historical antecedent.)
I would disagree. New Ranch Marxism goes wrong specifically because it retains many of the distinct errors of its progenitor.
Within the next two generations, Israel will be significantly larger than today, both in population and land area.
Israeli population growth shows no sign of abating, and, while the world is transfixed to Gaza, ancient biblical land of Bashan is now in the play.
Judea and Samaria and faith accompli, Bashan (and Gilead, when something happens in Jordan) are the next steps. Handmaid Tale fandom could rejoice, their fantasy could soon become real.
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