Some much needed re-wording

I don't mean this in the sense that "lol we have to change our lingo or shill communism under a different name" but that some things can be reworded more conveniently.

"Private" and "Personal" property
Use "property" and "possessions" instead. Applying the term property to personal belongings makes it seem like there is such a thing as "legitimate" and "illegitimate" property.

Identity politics
Too many people see our critique of "left" idpol as a fence sitting or even pro-reactionary stance on social justice, despite that only applying to nazbols. Instead of "idpol" and "anti-idpol", use "particularism" and "universalism".

Pic unrelated.

This tbqh. The idea of there still being some kind of "legitimate" property under communism is somewhat absurd, as if we intend to continue having state enforced rights to a certain class of products that can still be circulated freely in a market. It makes much more sense to say that you will possess or simply have use of certain items in a socially determined manner. Which isn't to say that you wouldn't have exclusive possession of certain objects (inb4 toothbrush jokes), but this control would be determined by custom or directly social decision making, not by an institution separate from and above society such as a state. There would be no "absolute despotism" of control over objects and no state backed right to alienate things from social control.

Yes I think refocusing on the fact that we are in favour of universalism is a good idea.

Glad you agree.

Good post, I agree.

Somewhat along the same lines, we need to change the way we talk about capitalism. As Marxists, we realize the progressive role capitalism played historically and we need to be more open about it. When Leftists spew negative facts about capitalism, it angers people who see all the technological progress capitalism made. They think we want to abandon all of that and start over. We need to emphasize that we seek to democratize the industry that capitalism created, not give up and start over.

Basically, we need to frame the discussion not as "Capitalism or Socialism?" but instead "Capitalism, then Socialism."

I agree with you, but I don't think the "capitalism/socialism dichotomy" is a result of leftists not framing it that way, most western marxist movements of the 20th century used that exact line of thinking and argument when talking about communism; that marxist socialism was a scientific prediction whose material realization was predicated on material development that we'd long since reached in Europe and NA.
I mean, most 20th century marxist theoretical revision was based around this conflict in prediction and reality, it was a quite commonly seen line of rhetoric.
The problem is that marxists (and through him, most other modern socialists) view history as a dialectical progression, even if they disagree with the predictions / methodology of Marx, this is in difference to what I'd say are the two forms of liberal thinking that most "pro capitalism" attitudes are built on.
When discussing the topic, most people default to one of two views of capitalism, either the view that capitalism is a material universal - that capitalism, hierarchy and trade has always existed and are a material and social truth of human behavior (some will make this into a question of biology or anthropology, and it often reveals some naïve positivistic attitudes to those subjects) - the second attitude you see is a sort of Fukuyama "end-of-history" progressivism that sees the "western liberal market democracy" as the end of the political dialectic, the perfect vehicle for economic and social justice. The view that economic and social injustice are either technical problems of 'not enough knowledge and research' about how just policy is shaped, or problems of people holding 'backwards beliefs', that changes with higher education levels and slow population replacement.
These are both highly ideological views of society, but they are both views that, when confronted with an alternative vision for society, naturally fits it as just that; an 'alternative'.

In my opinion this shows that the problem is the result of a lack of critical analysis of "Capitalism" as a concept - on the part of the one framing it as "capitalism or socialism".
This is kind of why rhetorically backing "Real Socialism" fucking sucks, because it's not just the positive program of economic and social justice, it's very much also the broader material (negative) criticism of Capitalism. If you emphasize the first, then you appeal to social democratic notions or stumble into liberal pitfalls. But if you then turn around and emphasize the materialist critique, then you appear as whining academics with no program, or you end up having little to no populist appeal.


Did you see that video some user made a couple of days ago where he critiqued the semantics of the term idpol? He used the term "reductionist identity politics" or something to that degree about identity politics that reduced class issues to issues of identity. I think the thread is still up, but it didn't see a lot of discussion iirc.

Based on the retarded misconceptions that abound in another thread, perhaps we should add the term "gift economy" to the list of terms to avoid. Not only is it a contradiction in terms (if there's no exchange or even rationing the term economy doesn't really apply), but it creates the impression that communist production would revolve around individuals and groups owning things and giving them out on the basis of individual whim/favour, rather than people having free access to a stock of communal goods.

I didn't. Which thread is it exactly?
Because among the people who accuse us of "brocialist class reductionism" there's one kind who are pro-universalism but misunderstand our position, and another kind which are actually particularist, almost reactionary "leftists"


I'm pretty sure the only person here shilling for a "gift economy" is mr. anarcho "markets have always existed" nihilist

...

If we started to ban the /r9k/ fags who call for state appointed sex slaves, anti-"degeneracy", closed borders, a permanent state since communism is impossible and we just want a nice big ussr-like nation, etc, maybe people wouldn't think this place is fir that kind of person yeah?
I mean, just maybe, when you carry your retarded brother around and he constantly screams about sonichu, people will think you're a sonichu fan and will never take your super legitimate sonic fanfinction that has nothing to do with sonichu seriously because of the association, you see?
It's a matter of how you phrase things sure, but less than that it's a matter of people using your ideas as a cover to spread entirely different ideas.

I'll just add more, more direct and literal.
When I get into arguments on this very board, where I'm having difficulty trying to convince people that sexual minorities should be allowed to exist, that racial differences don't matter, and that things like drugs or promiscuity shouldn't be outright banned, and they use "anti-idpol" as an excuse to cover their asses, you need to address this.
These people are the only reason the mainstream left will not take you seriously.

annil flags are like a perfect split of cool weird theory dudes and weirdos that are fucking obsessed with /r9k/ autists and 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧board culture🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
What the fuck are you talking about dude? You're the only one here talking about autists.


Idiots and false flaggers exist on this board, just fucking ignore them, nobody cares about them, they don't matter in the real world.

That's why you're failing m8. That's why the mainstream left hates you so much. You permit. You ignore it. You refuse to address these cancerous right wing elements in your own movement, you refuse to just add on "oh, hey, by the way, we're not associated with these retards that surround us everywhere we go". You know, you may know that already, nobody else fucking does.

did /r9k/ shit in your cereal, an-nil?
It sounds to me like you're advocating for universalism in the same way we are but you still get mad.

Yes. They shit in yours too. I mean a big problem is everyone assuming you're a reactionary when you're not right? It's an association thing.
Plus I used to post there and it bothers me how petty the whole ideology of the robot is.

what the fuck are you on about, do you not go outside?
I mean leftists are often pretty nerdy uncool types, but in my experience they're very rarely total robots. You know why? Because robots aren't activists, they aren't organizers, they aren't a significant voice, they're also a absolutely tiny part of the population. I've never read an article written by a robot reactionary pretending to be a leftists. I've never even heard of people refer to them as a political entity outside of Japan, except on here and on reddit.
They're pretty prevalent here, because this is Holla Forums. This site was literally kickstarted by an actual non-apologetic white nationalist splinter that thought their original community wasn't white nationalist enough.
You're the one who's obsessed here. These people just do not matter. You can take a personal interest in them, or have a personal stake in talking with them or including them in your theory. But it's definitely not necessary to include them in our larger view of politics. You have absolutely no sense of perspective.

I do. I do not find anti-idpol leftist groups advocating their views outside. I find normie leftists and more mainstream beliefs.
If I wanted to find your type I'd go on twitter, and on twitter you are associated with cancer. You need to break this association, not keep defending them, not keep pretending they don't exist to cover for their fucking asses.
Jesus.

I mean seriously. I'm the one who's obsessed? I'm pointing out the obvious. I'm the one telling you, the reason that everyone thinks you're shitheads, the reason everyone calls you brocialists as an insult and refuses to take you seriously, is because yes, exactly, Holla Forums is on Holla Forums, a white nationalist splinter that thought their original community wasn't white nationalist enough.

You can say "they don't matter" "ignore them" "they're irrelevant" all you like to me. That won't matter. It's you who is delusional if you assume circlejerking about how they're irrelevant will change the massive amount of people who don't think reactionaries hiding under your language are irrelevant because they think they're you. I'm telling you to say this to them. Say those lines to the people who think you're a fuckhead. The rest of the left. Let them know that those people do not represent you, let them know that even though you are attached at the hip to the political right, you are not yourself the political right.
You can't just keep pretending like this isn't a problem. Everyone hating you because you're associate with actual white nationalists is a problem.

Defending them? What are you talking about? I'm telling you that "refuting" them is a waste of air because these people don't matter, not because their asses are worth covering.
Popular movements aren't grown from 'refuting' idiots online. You are the one who's obsessed with Holla Forums's image online.
You've put so many positions on my shoulder despite the only thing I've told you is that online robot leftists don't fucking matter in the real world, which is a fucking trivial truth.
How new are you to leftism? This shit is not even remotely new, and not even remotely related to Holla Forums. Non-identitarian leftists have been callen brocialists and shit like that for decades. Decades.
You need to stop reading /leftytrash/ and let go of this stupid culture war that has been going on since the 60's. Non-identitarian leftism has to have a program of positive economic politics. Not fucking convincing liberals that Holla Forums really isn't right-wing I swear.

Non-identitarian leftism has been "associated" with white nationalists before it actually literally did in the case of Holla Forums. Culture war shit doesn't matter, and doesn't do anything. That's the fucking basic point of non-identitarian leftism; a return to material analysis.

I'm not interesting in refuting them you stupid piece of horse shit.
You right there saying "they don't matter" is defending them. They are the reason people hate you. Ignoring that, pretending that's not true, so you don't have to explain something so difficult as "I am not one of them" is defending them, because you're a lazy stupid faggot who doesn't realize that when everyone hates you for your association to the right, you fucking break that association, you don't blame everyone who hates you for not immediately reading your mind and understanding that no, you are in fact not one of those people who appropriates your language and uses it to spread right wing ideology.

And you know as well as I fucking do that Holla Forums, /r9k/, and Holla Forums are only a fraction of the total issue.
No matter how much you say "the right doesn't matter" on your fucking imageboard, everywhere else, people see and people experience your language being used to express their ideas. This influences what they think about you.

No wait.
I'm sure I'm wrong.
When the mainstream left calls you a word like "brocialist" it's not because they think you are one, that would be silly. No, I see now that you were right and they don't see you like that, they just use that word for no reason.

what a fucking shitshow

It ain't my fault motherfuckers don't engage with anyone outside their torture chamber. This shit should be common knowledge.

You are literally telling me to refute them, you are telling me that the fact that I don't spend rhetorical energy trying to separate my ideological stance from autistic rightwing channers who use a shared rhetoric with me is the reason that people call us brocialist.
Look I fucking agree with you that they are an issue, and they definitely contribute to an existing problem, I just think that you're blowing the issue completely out of proportion, and I think that in the end spending time fitting our rhetoric or doing ideological cleansing is a fucking waste of time and energy when that's not the root of the problem in any case. It's the same bullshit symptomatic thinking of liberals who insist that we ban the use of racial slurs for inclusion.
I mean, sure if we did that we'd definitely be a more approachable and inclusive place, and in the long run it might benefit the 'movement', but it's still this weird culture focus that only treats behavior that's symptomatic, and in the end strengthening the political strength of 'the Holla Forums movement' just does not fucking matter in any material or even real cultural sense.


I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make here. Did I insinuate that people don't actually think we associate with white nationalists? My point is that even when non-identitarian leftists explicitly disassociated themselves with white nationalists they were still seen as that. The problem is ideological, not incidental.

No, I'm telling you to distance yourself from them. I don't bother refuting tankies for example, I just throw them under the bus.
It's not so crazy to think that the people using your language to advocate for far-right ideas are ruining how your less popular (currently) opinions look to the larger left. Am I blowing it out of proportion? No, it's a big issue in a small pond. If you want that pond to not remain small, you need to stop scaring away all the rain clouds.
Forget the "Holla Forums" movement, the wider ideology you express is in danger, not just the board. It's in danger of being confused in the mainstream much like communism itself has become a confused topic. How people perceive a revolutionary movement matters. How the left perceives itself matters.
I feel like they must have been doing something very wrong. I haven't seen much of the post-left called out for this and a critique of idpol is involved there, but I could have just missed it or forgot.

But anyways.
I am open to hearing your superior solution to what you recognize is a problem.

Did you see the vitriol that Mark Fisher was exposed to when he wrote that vampire's castle piece?
I mean, it's just pretty widely recognized that the identitarian/materialist split in leftism has been going hard for around half a decade. Talking with my parents they've relayed having these same discussions in the 80's, my father was practically ostracized as a racist from the local anarchist millieu because he wasn't 'radical' enough and because he read Marx.
I mean, I'm open to being wrong about this, but my strong impressions are that
1. This identitarian response of guilt by association and ostracization through purity bullshit happens no matter what historically.
2. That this identitarian response is the result of more fundamental ideological reaction to materialist critique.
3. I don't think this pond is quite as small as you make it out to be. Plenty of active leftists and leftist movements think in largely material critiques, I mean at least where I live and in the material that I read. Many of them just don't see identitarian critique as a deal-breaker in the same way that many here do.
Simply said, I do not think that "These people are the only reason the mainstream left will not take [us] seriously." Because 1. there are more fundamental reasons why "mainstream" leftists cannot take us seriously, related to their position as the mainstream and 2. because a large part of the left already shares our view.
I'm making some assumptions about your view of identity politics, but at least it's the case with my view of identitarian ideology.
I've cleaned up my language a bit in response to you doing it, but this is basically what I've been saying since the beginning, I think you're completely off the mark and slightly obsessed with - or at least too focused on - online culture wars.


I think they are a problem for us because they're a hassle to deal with, they make it hard to introduce people to our culture and our theory, and even though I don't grant it much importance, online culture wars do still hold some importance. They complicate communication, and create conflict where there might not be any. And to repeat: they're fucking annoying and generally very fucking stupid.
My larger point is that while those problems are problems, and they hold some importance, I don't think any of those issues are crucial to either the spread of non-identitarian ideology, or - and this is the important bit - leftist causes as a hole.
As I said, focusing on the aesthetics of our culture and specific colour of ideological theory is just falling into the pit of culture war, it's criticizing Donald Trump for being a doodoohead rather than presenting a positive alternative vision. Leftist causes are furthered by mass movements, leftists organizations and theoreticians are not the movements themselves, they are but the fuel. Corbyn did not create a major turn towards leftleaning economics by presenting theory, and he did not rely on the aesthetics of his leftist theoretical background. Mass movements are organic and comparatively spontaneous and the result of larger material forces, UK turned left because people were shittired of austerity neoliberalism fucking them over.
So when I'm telling you to calm the fuck down, you're blowing this shit out of proportion, I'm telling you that this is only of issue internally within the parts of the population that discuss leftist theory and praxis, it's not a matter of praxis itself.

So from writing later I realized I'm kinda talking about two different communities. It's because I think while Holla Forums hasn't, a culturally similar group that probably contains a fair bit of the people from Holla Forums, but is just a more broad sort of deal, has become the voice or at least a major voice of your ideas.
Anyways.

Honestly no I didn't see it.
But I'm not fully ignorant of the history of that divide within the left, the love and rage collective split over this sort of conflict I think, but when it comes up as a conflict which it has since this place even exists, I think it can be reconciled through similar action to what OP suggested with rephrasing and such, I'm adding on that if you're doing it from a position of being an Holla Forums board (which I assumed he was, simply because that's where this thread is located), there's a lot of baggage that comes from that, we can't go full bat'ko and "take back brocialism", that kind of thing is extremely counter-productive, and I'm not suggesting you would suggest that, but the fact that many many people have praised that idea is kind of a big part of why I think anyone acting from the position of being an Holla Forums board should definitely break those associations. Even refusing to act as an Holla Forums board would be a great example actually, when people act off-site as Holla Forums or as the "alt-left" they're only making things worse.

I think to your three dotted points there, I'd say that it's not so much guilt by association as it is association by association. They legitimately can't tell the difference with a quick glance, the actual reactionaries just appear similar, if people are saying "purge [x] or you are [x]" then they're wrong. I'm saying purge [x] or you will be mistaken for [x], and I think that's what's happening.
I'm not sure if it's directly against a materialist way of thinking, I think again, there's if not an active element, there was at some point, that allowed the stereotype of "class focus = intentionally permitting other issues to get worse" to form. I think that stereotype and that collective belief needs to be broken somehow if you want them to listen to you, which I think you do want.
By this pond I mean, I'm talking about two different communities and I just went up and explained that on top instead of here. So with that, I guess, I would say the people who can't work with others are the ones I am referring mostly to or are the most important here. If your group and their group can work together in a group then there's absolutely no problem from my end, but when people with similar goals can not so much as attempt to reach them together it's a problem for those people.

When I refer to the mainstream left I was talking about the most active and vocal anarchists or marxist groups in the west, not major parties that get more than three votes, just to clear that up to be safe. If a large part of the left shares your views, then you're probably what I mean by mainstream left.

I don't feel like I'm particularly obsessed with them, but I recognize I am practically entirely focused on them, that is because this is an Holla Forums board I just kind of assume that's the main point behind the thread. So while the amount of actual importance is something we could try to find, since there's any in terms of the greater left at all, that means that in terms of itself it's entirely important.
I have to disagree. I think this is a big part of our disagreement too. This board is not one thousand leftists who were always leftists. This board contains people who were convinced by this board. Using culture and fun to spark interest I've put in motion some minor stuff myself in real life. Culture shit has an effect, but, specifically when it comes to distancing yourselves from reactionaries that steal your language it's definitely not that important outside of situations where the left addresses itself, you're fully right there, when it does address itself though and factions within the left are being labelled this and that it seems like it would be important to clear things up for the sake of an effective united force or at least diversion of energy away from self destruction and onto better forms of destruction.
Well. Internally is what I mean.

By this I mean a cultural trend I think I've noticed, nothing stemming from this place or anything like that.

It's 5 am here and I got work tomorrow, but I'll respond to you when I get back.

But I think the point is that we disagree on the societal role of the left as a political movement, I'll give it some more thought tomorrow.

bump