Westoid leftists have overestimated the role of ideology and underestimate the material incentives that stand in the way of collective action within the material class structure itself

Kinder Surprise egg, a quite astonishing commodity. The surprise of the Kinder Surprise egg is that this excessive object the cause of your desire is here materialised in the guise of an object, a plastic toy which fills in the inner void of the chocolate egg. The whole delicate balance is between these two dimensions. What you bought, the chocolate egg and the surplus probably made in some Chinese gulag or whatever, the surplus that you get for free. I don’t think that the chocolate frame is here just to send you on a deeper voyage towards the inner treasure, what Plato calls the agalma, which makes you a wealthy person, which makes a commodity the desirable commodity. I think it’s the other way around. We should aim at the higher goal, the goal in the middle of an object precisely to be able to enjoy the surface. This is what is the anti-metaphysical lesson, which is difficult to accept.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN 21 SAVAGE KINDER EGG

This is what we miss in the a***ysis of commodities, that instead of trying to penetrate the inner mystery, we should just enjoy the surface of the object.

The Kinder Surprise egg is a good illustration of this. First of all, I don’t think that the toy is there just to entertain the child, to surprise the child. I think, again, it’s the other way around. It’s the toy that, as a pure excessive object, makes you buy the whole Kinder egg. It’s like with Coca Cola. You don’t buy Coca Cola just to drink Coca Cola. You buy Coca Cola in order to be able to drink Coca Cola with its aluminium can, with its words, with its whole excess. This is what should be our aim in life, to be able to enjoy the objects as such, without all the fetishism of penetrating their inner, invisible, inscrutable work. This is the really anti-metaphysical lesson.

Why is it difficult to accept this lesson? Because this is what makes us humans. We are the only animal which, when they see a chocolate egg with a toy, they don’t just enjoy the egg, they say, “Why is there a toy in it?” They ask this question. They don’t just enjoy the surface of the object. They want to penetrate its inner mystery, to unravel the inner workings, to find out the truth of the object. They want to do this. That’s what makes us humans. It’s our elementary desire to find out what is hidden behind the surface of the object. This is why we have science. This is why we have philosophy. This is why we have all these sciences which try to uncover the hidden nature of the object.

You can see that this is the way how capitalism functions. On the one hand, you have the object, the commodity which is there with its surface. On the other hand, you have the inner secret, the secret which is the object of science, science that is there with its aim to uncover the hidden secret of the object. The way how capitalism works is to oscillate between these two levels. On the one hand, there is the excess, the surplus of the commodity, which is its hidden nature, which is the secret of its source. On the other hand, there is the excess of the scientific knowledge, the excess of scientific knowledge which tries to uncover this secret.

You can see that the oscillation between these two levels is what makes capitalism function. This is what makes capitalism tick. This is what makes us humans tick. We want to enjoy the surface of the object. We want to enjoy the surface of the object. We want to enjoy the surface of the object precisely because we are able to penetrate its inner secret. But the way how capitalism does it is to oscillate between these two levels.

Not sure if AI

been doomerpilled today thinking on the toilet and s***

is it possible that since the reproduction of ideology is the primary role of ideology, that even agitating is functionally useless in most cases?

saying this from personal experience although im sure yall have noticed but people who are able to even stumble their way through deprogramming capitalist realism also face in their own ways severe trauma through the shedding of the nice face of the capitalist system.

in essence there's this nightmare machine that 1. inflicts mass psychic damage to nearly every person incentivized to do something about it - and even to bystanders - and 2. the primary function of the world of ideology that we function inside of is to brainwash and massage the mess of contradictions (and 1.) into us in likely every conceivable and inconceivable way.

ig what im saying is that there's not much you can do until the larger currents of the base of society change, and to struggle too hard against it is adventurist and overly idealist?

also could the overt turn since the 70s of every marxist movement into even recognizing some need for a struggle to study the superstructure be related? in that whether conscious or not, the lack of the capability to navigate a clear path to revolution resulted in all this effort being spent scrutinizing mostly philosophical minutiae. like what's the point in refining the "purest" line when there's other s*** to be done; the answer being that there isn't s*** to be done so why not spend countless hours refining your line or something like that

as u can tell i dont really give a s*** but this is the only place where these thoughts will be remotely registered as the thoughts of a coherent person

also krishna or goon when u read this recommend me something that talks about this s*** in detail please, im really interested in this topic

also this is a terrible way to introduce myself but i guess i did that

also sorry for the wall of text i guess

also sorry if this is kinda off topic, i guess i get it if u just ban me but i dont really get how this site functions so i dont really know where to post this otherwise

also i really like this site and its a lot of fun to browse through and read various threads, i just wish i had more time or something to actually contribute to the community or something in a meaningful way, i guess i just hope that i can contribute in some way, even if its just this one post, or something like that

also also sorry for the mess of formatting i just got back from doing 2 hours of work on my job and its 1 am so i just copied and pasted my notepad document. also if u want to delete this post or something that would be cool

also also also sorry for the s*** tenses im really tired and im really bad at english

@cloud_rap

I'm not the big philosophy guy here tbh, I'm more the politics and economics guy

There is the famous Lenin quote: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

The role of any communist should be to prepare for whenever these "weeks" happen. They are a handful of moments in the history of any part of the world where there is an opportunity for revolution. However, we are very limited in individually causing these moments to happen. We are subject to the wheels of history like everyone else (so are the capitalists).

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.” - Huey P. Netwon

This quote shows me that many revolutionaries were fully aware that they would not reep the fruits of their actions during their lifetime, but that they were merely planting seeds for the future. A Marxist has to become comfortable with the scale of history and understand that for example the transition from feudalism to capitalism took centuries and a few failed attempts. The peasant revolts of the late Medieval Ages for example all failed. There is no reason to believe that it would be any different for socialism, although maybe the wheels of history spin faster this time because of information dissemination speed increasing.

Furtheremore, the achievements of the previous generations live through us, as do their struggles. That is why reading their works and studying their history is so important, because they already suffered many similar things and we can learn from them. You could read parts of Marx or Lenin and think it was written in 2022. Many problems didn't fundamentally change. The way we culturally package things change, and we must understand the shifts of society and even inside capitalism (capitalism has different phases and developments too), but the core mechanisms didn't really change since the days of Marx.

Marx is valuable because he was at the right place at the right time. Germany was still semi-feudal, so he was able to see how primitive capitalism was slowly seeping into Germany. Engels was a factory manager (later owner) in England and saw the first organized working class movement, the Charterists. He too was at the right place at the right time. They were able to view how ideologies changed, how economic modes of productions changed. They saw how liberal revolutions failed (1848/1849 revolutions), and how the Enlightenment values were forgotten in the pursuit of profit and private property. In our time, these systems are very settled in. The last shift that occurred was the shift towards neoliberalism occurring between the late 70s and the early 90s - this wasn't as major of a shift as Marx and Engels witnessed. We are just approaching the "end of the end of history" recently.

I also believe as a matter of strategy that every part of the world - imperial core, semi-periphery and periphery - must use different aims.

Capitalism cannot be reformed into socialism. Socialism can only be born out of a revolution, in which the proletariat forcefully imposes its will onto the bourgeoisie. However, revolutions can take different forms. A revolution can be a rapidly unfolding event, but a revolution can also be a gradual event. A rapid revolution is vastly preferable over a gradual revolution. In the periphery, revolutions will be rapid. In the semi-periphery, revolutions will either be rapid or gradual. In the imperial core, revolutions are highly unlikely as of now. Hence we must adapt our strategies here. Revolutions in the imperial core will only become likely if a good part of the periphery and semi-periphery are already socialist.

A gradual revolution can win if:
1. Land is nationalized; or: 100% taxation of land
2. Finance is nationalized
3. Military, intelligence and police are controlled
4. Money-to-labor voucher transition occurs
5. The judiciary and other political structures are slowly taken over.
If market socialism is necessary, it should only be a transitional method.

These points are very hard to achieve as of now - and this isn't even a full-fledged revolution. Perhaps the pink wave countries of Latin America could have achieved these if there were a big communist sponsor - however, without one, they are not able to cross the Rubicon, especially in taking over the military. But if we look at China versus Venezuela, the reason China works and Venezuela doesn't is that in China, land is nationalized, finance is nationalized and military is controlled by the party. At least in theory, China has the tools to progress to a socialist mode of production rather easily.

If China should not decide to take the role of the socialist hegemon aiding other movements (very likely), then the only other chance I see is smaller countries turning socialist in a regional revolution spreading to several countries and them sticking together very closely in political and economic affairs.

A gradual revolution takes years of fighting and backlash (imagine how hard even it was for Venezuela to do its mild anti-imperialist) social democracy), and even a rapidly unfolding revolution takes years, if not decades of preparation. 1917 couldn't have happened without 1905.
A revolution can occur in random moments, but it can only be steered into the direction of socialism if a proper movement is already in place. It is too late to start organizing once revolutionary fervor already spreads, let alone post-revolution.

Us in the imperialist core must follow a minimum-maximum goal, as Marx, Engels, pre-WW1-SPD and pre-1917-Bolsheviks demanded. The minimum goals are in reforms, short-term gains. Reforms are useful for the movement. With reforms, the communists can win the trust of the people, increase class consciousness and spread their name.

Rejecting reforms in order to promote accelerationist goals is counter-productive. Reforms alone do not decrease revolutionary pressure. The idea that we shouldn't bother with reforms at all is what Marx called revolutionary phrasemongering and the famous phrase "if that is what Marxism is, then I am not a Marxist". How will we gain the trust of people if we just speak of a distant hypothetical future event than of the now?

However, minimum goals of reform must always be combined with maximum goals of revolution. Reforms without revolutionary struggle is counter-productive, revolutionary struggle without engaging in reforms is counter-productive. Reform and revolution are not dichotomies, as is often portrayed. They must co-exist with each other; they are two sides of the same class struggle. The vanguard must combine both methods. This is the real crux of the thing: It is rare to see communists do both these days, you either have reformist types or purely revolutionary types, neither of which are effective in the imperial core.

Now, even if we are "effective", this doesn't mean we will switch to socialism. I think our short-term goals should be reforming and organizing within the workers movement while raising class consciousness, the mid-term goal should be to aid the semi-periphery and periphery of the world by keeping pressure on our bourgeoisie to keep peace and oppose imperialism, and the long-term goal should of course be a systemic change of our mode of production.

These timelines will mostly likely be accelerated through climate change. But even climate change won't make let's say France the new epicenter of socialism, it will still start in the semi-periphery and periphery of the world.

The Western socialist movement is probably at a point of 1870s, 1880s again if we were to recall the ghosts of the past as a comparison. It's gonna need a mass movement (1890s, 1900s) and massive shifts in world history (1910s) to make any long-term progress.

To round off, some Marx and Engels quotes:

"Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence."

"But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them."

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."

Transcript of a Marxism class at Tsinghua University, Beijing

in light of the recent shooter i am demanding mandatory physiognomy checks

It's crayz physiognomy kinda accepted in psychology

Psychologists are all mentally ill and psychopaths

when it's right it's right

zoomer Adam Lanza

you ever hear the adam lanza radio show call-in where he goes on a crazy rant about anarcho-primitivism

crazy that he had a YouTube page essentially outlining all his beliefs and why he did it and it was up for like 10 years after with nobody knowing about it. Don’t even think the FBI knew about it

pretty sure the FBI kept a giant file on him and knew he was gonna do it and let him. wouldn't be surprised if there was entrapment involved honestly given Lanza had severe aspergers.

cant wait to see the ktt socialism thread file

Bros first video on his channel was “My Antinatalism”