domain:novum.substack.com
They lived in those areas as a persecuted minorities under, ironically given the current accusations, 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 compelling 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.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
But when my uncle goes on about how DEI departments are "cultural Marxism" I think that is nonsense words. That's "progressive liberalism"
How? Critical Race Theory explicitly stood against the liberal approach to race.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Obesity is a complicated subject in that the question "why do Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets?" is one without an obvious answer or easy solutions. It is not a complicated subject in that the proximate cause of the obesity epidemic is that Americans live sedentary lives and have terrible diets.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
And, when you look at the actual content of Frankfurt critiques, they don't overlap much, if at all, with woke ones.
If the venn diagram of Critical Theory and wokism isn't a circle, it's pretty damn close. Or are you saying Critical Theory is not related to the Frankfurt School at all?
Oh, a Nietzsche-type destined to to be "consumed by powerful manias" or "paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties" should be very rare, but real. Was Diogenes the first recorded Nietzsche-type? It is difficult to discern to what extent the Nietzsche-type, the Grill-type, and the Priestly-type are conditionally generated or individually driven. The printing press, plow, literacy, the Enlightenment, and the 20th century provides tools to enable the Priestly-type that simply didn't exist at other points.
I think it is fun to think of this piece as reactionary. RETVRN! The philosophy of individualism fallen prey to anti-materialist, post-modernist witchcraft contradictions. "We must go deeper and wider." The heretical sect -- that which has sapped vitality of the faith -- has not sinned such that they cannot be forgiven, but only if they repent and, once again, condemn capitalism the evil that corrupts them.
ThenElection
2d ago
How bastardized does a theoretical development have to be before it can be considered an entirely different thing?
The Frankfurt School had lots of critiques of Western Civilization. But "people having critiques of Western Civilization" isn't a useful class--it'd group together everyone from the Frankfurt School to Evola to wokes to Mottezans to etc.
And, when you look at the actual content of Frankfurt critiques, they don't overlap much, if at all, with woke ones. They seem rather quaint actually, given the points of conflict and focus of today. And when you look at their actual actions during e.g. 68, they were considered enemies by student activists, shiftless intellectuals creating masturbatory theories while ignoring praxis. Habermas condemned "left wing fascism," Adorno famously called the cops on students protestors who occupied a lecture hall. (Marcuse, to be fair, was friendlier.)
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.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
I mean, its an easy heuristic to read Wikipedia and realize that it represents the most far left case that can be plausibly levied under their rules.
No? I am a far leftist and this really isn't the case. Wikipedia is generally pro establishment, and that lines up with the left in some ways and not at all in others.
Even so I was alone during 2nd intifada
My condolences?
terrorist campaign supported by all the relevant Palestinian parties in government, so that necessarily includes him and Arafat.
If you're going to claim that lets you call him a terrorist, you're going to have to admit that the entire Israeli government consists of terrorists as well. If you're willing to make that claim, fair enough, but otherwise it doesn't really mean anything at all - not that "terrorist" is a particularly meaningful political designation these days anyway.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2d ago
subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world
I feel like pointing out that the major historical abuse that lead to the jews leaving the arab world was actually the creation of Israel. Even wikipedia makes it clear that there were plenty of jews living in the Arab world up until the creation of Israel, and the descendants of those populations are largely referred to as Mizrahim today. Some of the other "abuses", like the 1950s Baghdad bombings, were almost certainly committed by Israelis in order to encourage Iraqi jews to emigrate to Israel to boot.
philosoraptor
2d ago
Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?
AI. I won't know what the exact angle will be until I see it, but it seems like a good bet it will be AI-related.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
"Palestinians brutally murdered by occupying military forces!... but it's not the IDF doing it, so does anyone really care?"
gog
2d ago
They want whomever they believe to be low-status in the culture to have more status. They believe everything is a social construct, and so they conclude that status is not earned, but granted by authorities to preferred classes of people, and stigma to disfavoured classes. Cultural marxists want to become the status/stigma-granting authority, and for them this means controlling art and education. In the US they’re primarily concerned with black people. In Canada they’re concerned about indigenous people. In Europe they’re concerned about migrants or something. You can question whether status actually works this way, but you can’t dispute that this attitude toward status is widespread all across the political spectrum.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
So you're saying cultural Marxists think black people need to be in charge of art, universities, etc?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
And are we arguing that that has yielded no fruit?
No I'm just saying I don't understand the explanation
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
2d ago
Cultural Marxism is a demonstrable thing, unless you believe that culture is some sort of fungus that shows up on economies. What do you think Homo Sovietcus was, anyway?
I mean sure, "the culture of Marxists" obviously exists
But when my uncle goes on about how DEI departments are "cultural Marxism" I think that is nonsense words. That's "progressive liberalism" and has essentially nothing to do with Marx except that I guess both have a general goal of a more equitable society (although I question if progressive liberals even want that).
Soft skills aren't my strong suit, but I spent far too much time gargling rage-slop from Facebook until I turned off the spigot, and the upshot of all of that is that I'm confident that there's a very straightforward model on the vague-left, as follows.
Everything is some kind of class conflict, in that there are rich people exploiting working people in some way. In order to solve a problem, you need to figure out who the rich exploiters are, and, depending on how brave and/or edgy you want to be, regulate/tax or eat/behead them.
In this case, possibly due to the influence of the evil developer trope, developers are evil business owners who want to bulldoze virtuous, affordable working-class homes and replace them with empty glass high-rises. Because developers are evil, it's never considered that the existing homes were once newly built by some other developer. Because developers cannot do good, it's never considered that people will live in these new buildings, so there's a persistent idea that developers intentionally construct buildings, intending that they stay empty, and profit from this by "writing it off" or something like that.
Example here: "No matter how many houses you build, if they are not affordable, then you will not solve the housing crisis."; "we need to take on the profiteers and the corporate giants to win homes for people." (This is an organization which is, as far as I can tell, not keen on letting developers build homes because they're "profiteers" and "corporate giants" and, presumably, the homes they build are somehow not "for people".)
Left-NIMBYism is, from what I can tell, frequently the result of getting negatively polarized against YIMBYs, who are, unfortunately, kinda smug nerds sometimes. For example, YIMBY poster Sam Deutsch made fun of comedian Kate Willett for being a gentrifier complaining about gentrification, and she is still, four years later, writing red-string-on-a-board articles like this and constantly tweeting about how YIMBYs are funded by "billionaires".
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
2d ago
Thank you, that was highly interesting.
This same concept has been independently rediscovered in multiple communities (including the link to the historical practice of shamanism) which increases my confidence that there's something to it.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
2d ago
I suppose that was ambiguous.
In terms of the sheer number of people around the world who (claim to) adhere to his ideas, no one can really touch Marx. But within academic circles, self-professed "followers of Marx" I think are more willing to be critical of Marx when compared to followers of certain other philosophers.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
2d ago
I believe it is a significant outlier yes, in terms of providing a comprehensive metaphysical worldview, an ethics, an eschatology, etc. I think it's more of a religion than any historical form of fascism is for example.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
The joke is that the US is already a mess from the perspective of outsiders. Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards.
I have a copy of 'Don't Make the Black Kids Angry', the entire book is examples of the non-stop American race-hysteria and tragicomedic, farcical levels of injustice and dysfunction that your country tries (with great success) to reframe as correct and enlightened diversity, while the actual Americans make workarounds and scuttle around anxiously referring to the issue via euphemisms or trying (for the fiftieth time) wimpy methods that failed the last 49 times.
What is this if not a backwards society? I view it as such, that's my opinion, based on my first-hand observations of dysfunction (drug addicts shooting up in public), observations via video, observation of American political rhetoric and observation of statistics.
anti_dan
2d ago
So? Maybe Turkey gets excited. Maybe the US gets taken over by lefties and imposes a blockade.
I bought some ethereum and bitcoin on Coinbase back when I was a teen (before either they or I kept good records), and still have it on the exchange now. I believe there is absolutely no shot of nailing down an estimate to even the year's granularity of the purchase date, so I can't just retroactively fudge the basis, either.
Is just donating it as-is to charity the cleanest way to wash my hands of this ambiguously-basis'd balance, or is that likely to somehow be even worse than just biting the bullet of a "$0.00 basis" plea?
Considering the possibility that no custodial exchange will keep my crypto unbreached all the way up through my death, just leaving it in there and banking on the free death basis step-up is a bad option, I'd think.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Idk, I could see you as sort of a nihilistic shaman. I think most prolific online posters have the potential.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Seems very likely to be bullshit, especially since the patients we see who fit into these buckets are um very un priestly.
Perhaps they would've lead happier lives as priests!
And why would Cluster-B not fall into this? Also you're saying hypermobility and chronic stomach pain are cluster B as well?
There is a little bit of that but giving it to trump also seems very premature, especially given his other proclivities.
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