Womanpuncher69

5y

Back to topic

CHUEV: Who was more severe, Lenin or Stalin?

MOLOTOV: Lenin, of course. He was severe. In some cases he was harsher than Stalin. Read his messages to Dzerzhinsky. He often resorted to extreme measures when necessary. He ordered the suppression of the Tambov uprising, that everything be burned to the ground. I was present at the discussion. He would not have tolerated any opposition, even had it appeared. I recall how he reproached Stalin for his softness and liberalism. “What kind of a dictatorship do we have? We have a milk-and-honey power, and not a dictatorship!”

CHUEV: Where is it written that he reproached Stalin?

MOLOTOV: It was in a small circle among us. Here is a telegram from Lenin to a provincial food commissar in his native Simbirsk in 1919: “The starving workers of Petrograd and Moscow are complaining about your inefficient management…. I demand from you maximum energy, a no-holds-barred attitude to the job, and thorough assistance to the starving workers. If you fail, I will be forced to arrest the entire staff of your institutions and to bring them to trial…. You must immediately load and send off two trains of 30 cars each. Send a telegram when this is complete. If it is confirmed that, by four clock, you did not send the grain and made the peasants wait until morning, you will be shot. Sovnarkom Chairman, Lenin.” I remember another case. Lenin had received a letter from a poor peasant of Rostov province saying that things were bad with them, that no one paid any attention to them, the poor peasants, that there was no help for them and that, on the contrary, they were oppressed. Lenin proposed the formation of a group of “Sverdlovers adults from Sverdlov University….” Lenin directed this group to go to the place in question and, if the report was confirmed, to shoot guilty parties right then and there and to rectify the situation. What could be more concrete? Shoot on the spot and that’s that! Such things happened. It was outside the law, but we had to do it…. Lenin was a strong character. If necessary, he seized people by the scruff of their necks.

CHUEV: They say that Lenin had nothing to do with the execution of the tsar’s family in 1918, that it was a decision of the local authorities following Kolchak’s attack…. But some people say it was revenge for Lenin’s brother.

MOLOTOV: They make Lenin out to be a crank. They are small-fry philistines who think this. Don’t be naive. I think that, without Lenin, no one would have dared to make such a decision. Lenin was implacable when the Revolution, Soviet power, and communism were at stake. Indeed, had we implemented democratic solutions to all problems, this would surely have damaged the state and the party. Issues would have dragged on for too long and nothing good would have come of this sort of formal democracy. Lenin often resolved critical problems by himself, on his own authority.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 107-109

KAYTRANADA

5y

Sorry to say but youre never acheiving communism on a large scale just like antinatalism

Nessy

5y

schopenhauer vs nietzsche itt

Womanpuncher69

5y

everything is fine thank god these dumb f***s couldn’t even read the stamps right

Womanpuncher69

5y

Lenin would have them shot on the spot like they should have been

Womanpuncher69

5y

Back to topic

CHUEV: Who was more severe, Lenin or Stalin?

MOLOTOV: Lenin, of course. He was severe. In some cases he was harsher than Stalin. Read his messages to Dzerzhinsky. He often resorted to extreme measures when necessary. He ordered the suppression of the Tambov uprising, that everything be burned to the ground. I was present at the discussion. He would not have tolerated any opposition, even had it appeared. I recall how he reproached Stalin for his softness and liberalism. “What kind of a dictatorship do we have? We have a milk-and-honey power, and not a dictatorship!”

CHUEV: Where is it written that he reproached Stalin?

MOLOTOV: It was in a small circle among us. Here is a telegram from Lenin to a provincial food commissar in his native Simbirsk in 1919: “The starving workers of Petrograd and Moscow are complaining about your inefficient management…. I demand from you maximum energy, a no-holds-barred attitude to the job, and thorough assistance to the starving workers. If you fail, I will be forced to arrest the entire staff of your institutions and to bring them to trial…. You must immediately load and send off two trains of 30 cars each. Send a telegram when this is complete. If it is confirmed that, by four clock, you did not send the grain and made the peasants wait until morning, you will be shot. Sovnarkom Chairman, Lenin.” I remember another case. Lenin had received a letter from a poor peasant of Rostov province saying that things were bad with them, that no one paid any attention to them, the poor peasants, that there was no help for them and that, on the contrary, they were oppressed. Lenin proposed the formation of a group of “Sverdlovers adults from Sverdlov University….” Lenin directed this group to go to the place in question and, if the report was confirmed, to shoot guilty parties right then and there and to rectify the situation. What could be more concrete? Shoot on the spot and that’s that! Such things happened. It was outside the law, but we had to do it…. Lenin was a strong character. If necessary, he seized people by the scruff of their necks.

CHUEV: They say that Lenin had nothing to do with the execution of the tsar’s family in 1918, that it was a decision of the local authorities following Kolchak’s attack…. But some people say it was revenge for Lenin’s brother.

MOLOTOV: They make Lenin out to be a crank. They are small-fry philistines who think this. Don’t be naive. I think that, without Lenin, no one would have dared to make such a decision. Lenin was implacable when the Revolution, Soviet power, and communism were at stake. Indeed, had we implemented democratic solutions to all problems, this would surely have damaged the state and the party. Issues would have dragged on for too long and nothing good would have come of this sort of formal democracy. Lenin often resolved critical problems by himself, on his own authority.

Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 107-109

Tkken

5y

ok sure

So there’s two threads behind antinatalism as its traditionally understood. the first is benatars assymmetry principle, which argues that the absence of pain is “good” while the absence of pleasure is merely “not bad” ethically speaking. hence, it is inherently better to not exist

But benatar is employing a double standard here. his argument for why the absence of pain is good is a counterfactual i.e. if a person comes into existence, they will suffer which is bad. But you can establish the same counter-factual for pleasure - if a person doesn’t come into existence, they will miss out on pleasurable experiences which is also presumably bad

So any fundamental assymmetry disappears and you’re left with the second thread of the argument - that there is more pain within a human lifetime than pleasure. The first question is what constitutes pain. It cannot merely be a physical stimuli of some sort, because people often feel fulfilled doing strenuous and superficially painful things i.e. weight lifting. We cannot assume that, simply because a person’s life is mostly made up of exerting activity, that person is unhappy — pleasure as most people truly conceptualize it is a long-term state of fullfillment

Now, most people are clearly unfulfilled in late capitalist society, but this configuration has only existed for a few centuries. Human beings have spent millennia prior in different states of organization, as well as existing as hunter-gatherers untethered to the pressures of capitalism. By all accounts, these hunter-gatherers worked less and had more leisure time than we do, and lived in harmony with nature rather than being alienated from it. I would imagine that, despite the lack of modern physical comforts in their lives, they felt far more healthy and fulfilled than modern human beings

Thus, you have to win that our current mode of organization (capitalism or something worse) will more likely than not exist until the extinction of human civilization. This is a big and most likely false IF. There is more to say here but my general point is that you can’t generalize the conditions of capitalism to human existence writ-large

the fundamental assumptions of antinatalism are also wrong. For one, antinatalists assume that pleasure and pain are stable quantities that a self accumulates over time. But this isn’t actually the case - once a person dies and presumably reaches a state of oblivion, they do not have the faculties of memory or consciousness necessary for the pleasures and pains they experienced to leave a “trace” on them

That is to say, there is no meaningful distinction between a person who dies and fades into oblivion, and a person who simply never existed at all - regardless of how much pleasure or pain the former person experienced. Thus, if there is ANY non-zero chance of there being value to existence other than pleasure and pain, it is net better for people to exist. This is a pretty low bar that the world probably surpasses given how uncertain we are about what the correct ethical theory is and how little we know about the origins of life and consciousness

That brings me to my final point, which is that hedonism is entirely arbitrary. Why even assume that pleasure and pain are the ultimate moral goods and bads? Humans value many other things, such as art, philosophy, competition, and so forth

So ultimately anti-natalism is a consequence of a long and highly particular set of assumptions, each one less likely than the last. In my personal opinion, its current popularity is mostly an artifact of late capitalist society and the despair it creates rather than any rigorous justification/argument

Womanpuncher69

5y

everything is fine thank god these dumb f***s couldn’t even read the stamps right

KAYTRANADA

5y

I mean just because there is pleasure doesnt change the fact that pain precedes pleasure for pleasure to even exist. And pleasure is not guaranteed to be the end result of every instance to avoid pain.

Sure antinatalism in itself is a moral code, but that doesnt change the fact that nature doesn’t have one.
Nature’s laws are the foundation for its randomness, something of which will never be controlled and again, subjecting anyone to this is just rolling the dice. My intial descendant may say his life was worth it, but what about his next of kin, and the next? There will be one, if not many descendants on this line who would have rather not been born, or would have lived a life of suffering. Suffering is inevitable and will always be out of one's control.

You can draw a parallel from this family tree to a civilization in itself. There have been civilizations that have risen and fell. All of which have not actualized the well being of everyone involved.

So if anything, antinatalism should be the only moral code, for if enacted succesfully there would be the absence of everything else.

krishna bound

5y

today's culture war distraction / twitter drama: the girls over @ red scare have a paranoid screaming meltdown at Zizek on their podcast for schooling them on vaccine efficacy and suggesting mandates

Scratchin Mamba

5y

Lmfao link
Love zizeks vaccine takes tbh

krishna bound

5y

https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/3/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/patreon-media/p/post/59727393/2a053760200f4cd6b2b11ea954040c40/1.mp3?token-time=1639699200&token-hash=RqdVAMa4jRWdI_Vy-awO0Bzg2Z3MkhQmoA-wB5nRIIA%3D

pirate link to their podcast, forgive me for forcing you to listen to hte podccast but idk the time stamp

a + d unironically went on a lib meltdown about muh freedoms and muh body autonomy while saying mandates are a liberal position and vaccines are a conspiracy, got steamrolled by him, and proceeded to become paranoid schizoids yelling at him and accusing him of s***

krishna bound

5y

https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/3/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/patreon-media/p/post/59727393/2a053760200f4cd6b2b11ea954040c40/1.mp3?token-time=1639699200&token-hash=RqdVAMa4jRWdI_Vy-awO0Bzg2Z3MkhQmoA-wB5nRIIA%3D

pirate link to their podcast, forgive me for forcing you to listen to hte podccast but idk the time stamp

a + d unironically went on a lib meltdown about muh freedoms and muh body autonomy while saying mandates are a liberal position and vaccines are a conspiracy, got steamrolled by him, and proceeded to become paranoid schizoids yelling at him and accusing him of s***

Womanpuncher69

5y

Does anyone take the whole Brooklyn podcast scene or podcast in general seriously anymore?

Womanpuncher69

5y

Does anyone take the whole Brooklyn podcast scene or podcast in general seriously anymore?

krishna bound

5y

well aimee therese convinced she's out in the trenches fighting for life or death by beefing with them, she posts all the time about she's "fearful for her life" and a "target of the system", so at least 1 person

Scratchin Mamba

5y

Aimee always been a fraud i never fw her

Turning into an outright reactionary is inevitable for the stupidpol types for who leftism is just a way to own libs thru their criticism of identity politics

krishna bound

5y

I think in her case she is genuinely mentally ill. I hate to de-individualize her, but she clearly has something wrong with her (besides the literal meth she does + if youve ever seen pics of her its more clear she has serious problems); she goes on insane tweeting benders for like 18-20+ hours if not longer at a time and has sabotaged every single friendship and connection she's ever had, usually fabricating insane false stories to justify stuff. She cannot differentiate twitter from real life and multiple times has had like mental breakdowns thinking stuff was going to happen because of drama with niche <2k follower twitter users.
She has insane like Q-Anon level conspiracies (she had like a 100 tweet thread last year on how Matt Christman from Chapo was a herald of the Military-Industrial Complex unironically) and her politics have become incomphrensible, even besides the obvious right wing stuff. On top of all of this she is an australian NEET but somehow thinks she is emblazened in the center of american politics - like all of her beef with Breunig is literally because she thinks the Breunigs are trying to assassinate her or something so they can enact policy she is "exposing them for". It's all really sad honestly.

Scratchin Mamba

5y

Oh wow didn't know it was that bad