How can you say that socialism failed if it failed it's not actually socialism

Is there a marxism beyond this linguistic idealism?

The Soviet Union hardly failed. It succeeded in many respects.

If you want to see a failed experiment look at the United States and the EU

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Yeah it's called marxism-leninism but you better be prepared to defend the dead horse of 20th century communism.

It's not about the soviet union failing or not, it's about making "socialism" into a linguistic form that is never faulty, because it is a word only meaning its own perfection. It functions exactly like the "that's not capitalism, it's corporatism" argument.

Capitalism is unsustainable for multiple reasons. Socialism is meant to be a solution to this inherent instability and wastefulness. You can't understand socialism without first understanding why capitalism is unsustainable, needlessly wasteful, and inherently alienating.

This would make sense if anyone here said "Not my real socialism", people here to defend prior and currently existing forms of socialism.

It's not changing the definition and twisting the meaning of "socialism", it's people saying that the workers did not control the means of production therefore it was not Socialism, which by definition is worker ownership and control of the means of production.

Which excludes all those who support capitalism from understanding socialism. What this comes down to is an argument similar to "you can't understand the truth of the bible without believing in it".

I might start doing this now.

No that's why anarchism is better cause you don't have to pretend that shitty authoritarian bureaucratic hellscapes were actually good.

Definition isn't constitutive to meaning but derivative, definition arguments are useless when both sides apply a different meaning to a word, leading only to a back-and-forth of nuh-uhs. If I were to accept "Workers owning the means of production" as the meaning of the word socialism, then this still leaves me to the question what exactly this ownership of the means of production entails. Is it a socialism when I own a hammer? Is it a socialism when I own a share in the business I work for? Is it a not-socialism when I can not do whatever I want to my workplace because ownership implies inclusive right to use?

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No, what it means is actually first looking at the critiques of capitalism. The fact is that those that support capitalism have a blind faith in it. They're not aware of such things as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the fact that produce is actually destroyed in order to keep the price high etc etc etc. The fact that people are ignorant of how capitalism works is the problem

The critiques of capitalism assume a model in which the world is mechanical process. It's map-territory relation that begs the question (all do, the point is to acknowledge this to make one capable of meta-analysis) in the same manner the science it claims to be does.

What are you suggesting? That there are no laws by which our world is governed? How is that not just lazy "nothing is real everything is subjective" pomo bullshit?

My god, you're right! Now that you've opened my mind, I must say, I can't understand you at all!
What is a workplace? Can my bed be called a workplace when I work to stand? Can my car be a work place when I work to steer it? Truly can anything be said to be anything linguistically?
You're being a pedantic fuck and your lack of knowledge is showing. You have no nuance, and will invariably see us making fun of you as being ignorant to your criticisms

What is laziness is using the PoMo boogeyman to avoid meta-analysis. If I'm going to take the leap of faith, why should I leap to marxism?

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Is believing in gravity a "leap of faith"? What leap of faith is required to recognize facts? If you're making the case that there is something to marxism that is not factual, state what it is and why it's not factual

What did he mean by this?

more specifically, state what is not factual about the marxist critique of capitalism

Ironclad definitions can not be taken only as such when it suits you. Or actually it can, which is why you're mad.

But don't you see, what is anger? You claim I am angry, yet you have not defined anger itself. How can we see anger upon me? We know there is no nuance or history to be had with a word, so we would need some sort of empirical basis to determine if I'm angry or not. The mods should pin this thread so we can get to the bottom of this.
To use some of your own "question structuring", is it an angry when I type so many sentences? Is it an angry when I call you a "pedantic fuck"?
Dare I say, did I just btfo of emotions?

kek

It is not a matter of facts (isn't saying "look at the facts" precisely ideology at it's purest?). Marxism assumes a mechanical model, of the world as machine with its content defined by function, with those very same facts however, a million other ideological places are possible, so therefor merely looking at the facts does not substantiate the ideology.


So close, yet so far away.

stick with the gorillas, bud

How about you actually read Marx

It is though. What is factually incorrect about the marxist critique of capitalism? M > C > M cannot be interpreted in any other way then M > C > M. What is purely ideological is stating the nothing is real, everything is relative. If you take a step off a building you fall, there's no other way to interpret the event then that. Everything else is just solipsistic nonsense.

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seem like you wan't them extra solid arguments and the theory that sustains them.
Have you considered reading a shred of marxist theory?
Because we can debate here all day and all arguments will be simplifications.

The point he was referring to is precisely that, not real socialism= not my real socialism

What I read was a self-fulfilling prophecy that couldn't even fulfill itself. Society is determined by class interest, but then it's not because people don't read marx, but then people do and they still don't which is because of ideology, which is determined by class interest except when it's not but then it still is because it does so by definition…

The problem with marxism is not so much that it is wrong, but that it is always right.


If I take a step of a building and fall, this event can be interpreted as evidence that we live under the system of suicidalism, that an evil spirit took over my body or that you drove me to suicide by stupefying me with an overdose of ideology. All interpretations are backed up by The Fact.


I like how he's making my point for me by using it against me. Also, orang-utangs love socialism.

You aren't even getting another image for that one.

So then you can make the argument that socialism is the interpretation of the facts shown by the critique of capitalism. You can even go full nick land and interpret them as leading not to socialism but neo-feudalism. What you can't do is deny that the "person has fallen off the building". If you have a better interpretation to what capitalism faults will lead to, then present it. Don't masturbate publicly like what you've been doing so far

Anyone who doesn't reject Marxism's religious aspects is a fucking idiot, honestly. But saying class consciousness is reading marx makes me think you're the bigger idiot here.

My interpretation is that the facts of capitalism do not lead to capitalism as system, just like I do not believe that the fact that there is suicide means that we are living under (why is it always "under" for marxists?) suicidalism.

An example of how a map-territority religion fails is when we speak of hinduism as a religion and interpret it as we do with the familiar religions of christianity, islam and judaism. We give it a conception hinduism itself does not have, as the term hinduism refers to the spirituality of india in general, something those familiar with the abrahamic religions are unable to understand. The same is true for those who conceive of present day economic activity as Capitalism.

"History is class struggle, this is a fact, history will lead to communism, but only if people take to my teachings about how history is class struggle that will lead to communism"

If the facts of capitalism do not lead to "capitalism as a system" then what does? The decline of the rate of profit does not exist for you because you do not believe it exists? Does the Hindu caste system and the religious justifications not exist purely because you do not believe it exists

lol wut. Marx never stipulates that people need to read him or believe in him in order for communism to come about. The entire Marxist critique is showing how the monopolization of resources will inevitability lead to the abolishment of the market. Capitalism leads to it's own abolishment by it's need to accumulate profit, get rid of competition, the inability to then create profit due to it's own innovations since they lead to less consumers which can by stuff. All of this leads to a situation where planned production becomes a necessity

So you are basically claiming Marxism has a is-ought problem? Why do you believe that the facts of capitalism fail to prove that there is any actual system we're living "under" and that it's really all just chaos?

That's not what class consciousness is, you imbecile. Do you think back in the French Revolution they achieved class consciousness and thus revolution with books from a man that didn't even exist yet?

Does the religion of Europeanism exist because there is religion present in europe?

So you're making the case that capitalism differs from place to place, and that it doesn't follow the same law of value? Is there any place where capitalism's goal is not to make profit? If so then show me such a place.

Finally!


Because power is spread far more evenly than designating capitalism as The System implies.


I don't think an adhoc appropriation of the french revolution to give your proposals the weight of history means that said proposals are anything but a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Capitalism doesn't have a goal. If you were to say that the capitalist is a one-dimensional searcher of profit, then capitalists would be like ants, we wouldn't even be able to have a conversation with them because their very language itself would be structured around profit.

If your business does not make a profit it goes out of business. Your argument is purely semantic at this point. We're not discussing who capitalists are in their private lives outside of business because that's completely irrelevant to how the system operates.

Marxism knows no such thing as "private lives". The personal is political.

I really don't get what you're trying to say with power being spread more evenly, i hope it's not just more senseless arguing about semantics. Capitalism is a state of things, not some evil oppressive system.
I just was trying to show you that class consciousness, because it is literally just realizing that you're getting screwed, does not require reading Saint Marx's prophecies and gospel, but whatever. I don't really believe in communism being inevitable either

Take the numerous marxist writings on how everything that exists is somehow capitalist domination; pop songs, penis-in-vagina sex, open borders, closed borders, marriage etc etc… to state that capitalism is just a state of things, just the fact we have business and wage labour, places you fundamentally outside of marxism.

Did a gorilla post actually bring up a good point of discussion for once?

No