Hey Holla Forums I'm a newfag/normie who has been reading more about socialism lately...

Hey Holla Forums I'm a newfag/normie who has been reading more about socialism lately, and I'd like to get some answers from people who know their theory/can explain.

How can you expect people to identify more with class than with race/ethnicity? It seems that a working class person in Japan would have much more in common (with language being the first and foremost quality) with the Japanese bourgeois than with an Ethiopian prole. In almost every instance people tend to organize along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines rather than class any time of the day. What is the justification for this? Note that I'm not objecting to the idea of socialism, but it would just seem difficult to have a commune with people who don't speak the same language or agree on some basic cultural norms or traditions first.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Hznlp-DwgSw
youtube.com/watch?v=N-d3JSIaKg8
youtube.com/watch?v=22Ta1wUAWX4&list=PLTzcu_BXWdOx1dJvyvJKUHDdrneNZIPxM
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Holla Forums can't differentiate between actuality and reality, they read too much.

Do you really think coworkers Bill and Jamal have less in common than Jamal and Obama?

Do you really think the brothers bourgie bill and prole jamal have less in common with each other than with their fellow proles and bourgies half a world away?

You don’t. You create a very decentralized version of socialism so you don’t have to deal with this issue.

In all cases they speak the same language. You put two people of the same social status, hell, they might even work in the same kind of work environment, but they are not of the same culture, ethnicity, and don't even speak each others language? That's impossible.


So then what is the socialist take on the neoliberal immigration policy? I have heard some support it, I have heard others say that it is a lazy way to "import" a proletariat.

Open borders and no imperialism. People can go where they want but without perpetual wars and destabilization in the designated "who cares?" parts of the world, there's no refugee crisis. Also help the poorer parts of the world build infrastructure and give them control of their resources instead of siphoning them away.

I don't need to be an african to realize that my struggles have more in common with the poor there than the rich here.

Fanon makes a similar points, there are some cultural limits to the organization of revolution and dictatorships of the proletariat, but you're not going to have a commune with millions of people in it anyway. Communes are pretty local entities. In that sense, communism isn't really about forcing you to deal with foreigners, but to have some basic solidarity with your common struggle and to reduce your immediate atomization in your community.

Good questions, OP, keep lurking and being honestly inquisitive. It will pay off.
Let's say you are a typical American, and proud of your ethnicity and culture (whatever these mean). You wake up at 05:30 AM, have breakfast, rush to the bus, go into a factory and work 8 hours straight. Your boss treats you like shit, you are underpaid, and his profits come from your economic exploitation. Then, at the end of the month our prole has to cut corners, save money, economize on the very basics of his needs, waiting for the pension at age 70. This is literally the same routine 90% of humanity goes through every day, be they German, Mexican immigrants, Serbian proles, Iranians, etc. This routine dominates each of our lives, second to it only what we spend while sleeping.

Now how much time do you spend being "Japanese"? Obviously, you speak the language, but even anima fags in the US can speak Japanese, does that make you have more in common? The typical bourgeois has the following daily routine, regardless where he's from: wake up at 1 PM(ish), check stock market online, have long breakfast, read news, start drinking cocktails, call the factory manager to see if everything is ok, cash in your check at the end of the month.

From the two above, QED: a Japanese prole has more in common with a US prole than with a Japanese bourg in terms of activity. Your feels (identity) are not > reals (what you do).

Spreading class consciousness makes people realize this and unite. There's a long history of the bourgeoisie suppressing working class unity, I recommend you with starting this youtube.com/watch?v=Hznlp-DwgSw
then moving on to pic related (or the variant of your country if there's one). Ask for book recommendations based on your country of origin.

Because class determines how a person relates to the Means of Production and whether their surplus value is being exploited.
This is independent from "race", skin color or ethnicity. If a worker in Japan is being exploited - which specifies an economic relation, and not a moral judgement - they are a member of a proletariat. If the same is going on in Ethiopia, those workers too are proletarians. What they have in common is class, which is how a capitalist system is stratified.
A White capitalist can exploit a "Black" worker, just as the other way around. For describing how they relate to capitalism their "race" is irrelevant.

Cultural and geographic divisions do not exclude class divisions.

Cultural norms and traditions are themselves the result of material conditions. Notice how many wars have their basis within competition over resources, population pressures and poverty? Multi-ethnic communities have existed since the dawn of recorded history.
It is in times that resources are under stress that you see a rise in inter-ethnic violence, persecution, racism, etc. Just look at the Rwanda genocide, or the pogroms in Eastern Europe, or plenty of other ethnic conflicts and civil wars.

That people lash out against their fellow workers rather than their exploiters has to do with a lack of class consciousness. That is recognizing their mutual interests as workers not to be exploited. Instead, in the absence of class conciousness they see "the other" competing with them for limited resources, but do not recognize the master at the top that is exploiting everyone.
There is a reason why capitalists whip up nationalist sentiment in times of economic crisis.

Likewise "nations" are imaginary communities. Invented by the bourgeois to encourage workers to act against their own class interest. Please read the PDFs related.

Your here is a very little world.

Accidental sage.

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This is the constitutive fallacy of marxism, not that it is wrong, but that it always right.


Evidence please.

Against it, but that’s just me.

youtube.com/watch?v=N-d3JSIaKg8
youtube.com/watch?v=22Ta1wUAWX4&list=PLTzcu_BXWdOx1dJvyvJKUHDdrneNZIPxM
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/origin_family.pdf

Funeral business profit from death which means they're all owned by serial killers.

Can you actually point out how Marx and Engels were wrong?
You wonder how people relate to each other under capitalism, and the primary distinction is class. Because it is class that determines where they are situated within the economic order, whether they have to sell their labor power, how they relate to the means of production, etc. Race doesn't fit in here.

Read the second PDF.
If you want examples of how workers are led to act in their own material self-interest just look at WW1 and WW2. Who was it that ended up profiting?

I don't think you quite get how this world works, user. These disciplines don't work the way exact science does. This isn't due to them being Marxist, mind you, it's due to the nature of the subject (humanity) and the possible tool sets we can construct to analyze them.

Engels gives plenty of examples that fit the framework of his theory. Are you actually going to point out the errors in his reasoning, or just shitpost?

Begging the question.


Read Being and Time.


The Simon-Wiesenthal center, the history channel and Vladimir Lenin. Again, begging the question.


Oh I get how it works just fine, you determine guilt based on what you perceive as incentive.

You lack reading comprehension.

If you're trying to establish a commune, you cannot organize based purely on your class and material conditions. Things like a common language, cultural norms, etc are vitally important for ordering any society

wut

We've got a live one here!

I can't put my finger on it, but I'd say the an idea that "nation as the highest good" is decaying, even if not at some incredible speeds. Just look at the European nationalists today, they're already behaving like internationalists rather than national chauvinists in many regards, not to mention that the cancerous burgerfat culture is influencing everybody in their 20s regardless of the political convictions(case in point: 4/pol/)

idealism.gif

You can compare our ability to attain and retain knowledge between when we used science and when we didn't. This is a shitty argument. The point is that verifying the value of scientific verification through science is circular reasoning, meaning that empiricism requires an a priori assertion that it is valuable.

They are since they can be change without much issue, you can learn a new language and adopt foreign customs without bothering the society you live in but you can't change how you relate to the means of production without porky crying

If people Holla Forums were christian

They are, but only to a point. Things like culture and language are instilled within you and stay with you more or less for life, this goes doubly so if you're a different race. Even if material conditions and pressures change, the culture, due to the very nature of culture itself, has a strong continuity. This is why such a thing as "Japanese culture" has had visible continuity across by dress of years of material and economic change. Not to mention the fact that culture also determines visceral or "felt reactions to things instinctively, especially relating to social interaction, the role of culture is not something that can be changed and shed like a material possessions, espe jelly if it is grounded in a certain ethnic/genetic way.

What he meant with this?

Cletus and Jimbo will always get along better with each other than they will with Jamal and Tyrone. And of course Tyrone and Jamal will prefer to stick to each other as well.

The bourgeoisie is really neither here or there when it comes to intra proletarian ethnic tension. And to make matters worse Jimbo and Cletus will gladly sell jamal and Tyrone down the river if the Vanderbilts offer to throw them some extra scraps. And this is why you fail.

But then again, a higher percentage of leftypol are atheists than pol. And one more thing: commies don't go to Holla Forums to start an "honest questions, gais" thread just to try to cringily assert their dominance with wikipedia.org/List_of_fallacies -tier "checkmate!" shit. We get banned on sight. So enjoy your stay and be appreciative for the reply efforts you get, because you clearly don't deserve it.

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If you don't agree show where it is inconsistent. Show how race is relevant here rather than (or in addition to) class. An Ethiopian can be a capitalist or a worker, but if they are either it describes how they relate to the capitalist mode of production and its characteristics.

Sure I'll check it out. In the meantime though, can you describe (in short) how it relates to what Engels wrote?

Lenin didn't "profit" in the capitalist sense of the word, but he was able to pursue the revolution (together with millions of others). That is different from deriving material gain from the situation. Lenin also didn't start that war. The same cannot be said of the aristocracy and industrialists of the major powers involved.
In the end it was workers that died in the trenches, workers that toiled in the factories, workers that died in bombed cities, etc.


Which I wasn't implying. Language barriers exist but can be overcome. I also don't see why speaking a different language or having slightly different cultural norms should lead to strife over material conditions. I'm not going to bash your brains in because you have a different accent, or are religious and prefer to pray on a prayer mat.
Contention between cultures can be related to the material conditions those cultures find themselves in, and how those cultures determine the allocation of resources.


Not even a leftist, but what?

Entertain us! What's beyond "that point" that is not material, oh king of atheism and rational debates?

By saying "culture is simply a result of material conditions" is to compare culture with something like a house or a set of clothes, which is simply not true, because unlike houses or clothes to an extent, a culture determines the general attitudes, mannerisms, and nor.s of a society to the restriction of those of other cultures, this is even more dramatic when language barriers are present. Unlike clothes and housing and material belongings, cultures cannot be shed or traded or bartered over, and they are with a person more or less for their whole life.

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That you reason like a bible thumper and have the same slavish adherence to scripture.


If nationalist means an adherent of the own nation-state, then you can't call those who despise their own nation-states nationalists.

Marxian class is an artificial imposition in the realm of relationships, people just don't view each other in such terms. Even after this view of things having been rammed into their heads for 70 years in the soviet union, they didn't.


More members of the British aristocracy died in the war percentage wise than did workers. World war one was the death knell of the European aristocracy. You're simply appealing to cliché here.

And how does what you just said negate that culture is a result of material conditions? You just described the effects that culture has on people.

You are still avoiding the question. What is more than material about language, culture? Souls? Free-floating platonic concepts? Thetans?


*tips fedora*

ITT: an enlightened atheist who believes there are things beyond the material world

I am not denying that it is material, but the way in which a culture is expressed in the world is not like a fashion sense or food taste or housing condition. Both genetics and class are material conditions, but to autistically treat them the same in order to satisfy your theory is contrived and stupid.

It does exist but not in marxian terms, it's about income, status and culture, not about bourgeois/prole.

Capitalists don't have wages, they have profits.

It's more like you and us live on a different intellectual planet and we would have to go into ridiculous detail to explain what capitalism is in the consensus sense and what capitalism is to Marxists and how they contrast each other to even begin to be on the same page and have an argument. It's easier if you just actually read the material yourself.

what did he mean by this

do you even know what bourgeois/prole means

Refer to

There are certain (MATERIAL) concrete and unavoidable aspects of a culture that cannot be shed.

A white guy looks weird with the funny Asian hats
Marxists BTFO

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No one here is arguing that culture is the same as a house or a set of clothes. Just that material conditions determine how culture develops. Obviously culture mannerism and attitudes influence people's decisions, but that doesn't mean that they don't have their origin in how people relate to their environment, and how that influences their interactions with each other.

Perhaps their subtleties are not readily commodified. But not all culture specific mannerism stay with you your whole life. Some might be obsolete or undesirable in a new environment. They can also be propagated outside their practitioners.
Culture is also fluid, what we see as distinct cultures can be composed of elements that are not completely shared by everyone we associate that culture with. Not everyone in Japan practices calligraphy.


I don't think most people consciously view others as a mere collection of atoms and molecules. That doesn't mean that view is false.
Class in Marxism describes how people relate to each other and the Means of Production. Not how they view each other. The class relationship doesn't disappear when I stop viewing others as either proles or capitalists.

How most members of the aristocracy related to the war differed from how ordinary workers related to it.
Prominent members of the NSDAP and wealthy German industrialists died or lost family members during WW2. That doesn't deny who started it, or who was set up to profit most from it.

"beginning on the same page" means accepting premises that have your conclusions embedded in them.

bad people/good people

epig ::DDD

Have you ever actually read Marx and how he described those two concepts. There is no moral judgement involved in the distinction between bourgeois and proles. It is a material relation, not a moral one.

haha yeah it's pretty funny pal

that's not what materialism means
and you're acting like real life is like a fucking RPG and you have 5 towns with different cultures and everyone inside those towns talks and looks the same and they can't ever switch to a different town ever because they're forever spooked by their culture

Yet you don't make the argument that we shouldn't discriminate between a chair and a person because it's all just atoms anyway. Atom solidarity, down with the false distinctions of identity!

Just like you still consist of atoms when I stop seeing you as just a bunch of atoms. I hope you're getting my point here.

In practice there is though, whatever marxists don't like, they call bourgeois; bourgeois morality, bourgeois art, bourgeois sentimentality, bourgeois music, bourgeois feminism.. none of which requires these to be exclusive to those who earn money through means other than wages, it is condemnation disguised as categorization. I don't I would ever say this; read Foucault.

I think your missing the point. I am not advocating solidarity based on the existence of mere distinctions. I'm pointing out that members of the proletariat are both distinct from the bourgeois in at least one particular way, and have a material interest in addressing their own exploitation.

And again, it doesn't seem that you get the point being made here. Your point seems to revolve around the idea that if we don't actively recognize class relations, it doesn't exist. It's idealistic solipsism.
Class is about a relation between people and things such as the Means of Production. Even if (most) people do not look at the world in that manner, it doesn't mean that view is invalid. If you want assert the irrelevance of (Marxian) class as a distinction between people, show how it does not describe how people relate to capitalism, and through it with each other.

Opposition to that can exist without assigning a moral judgement to it. You can be opposed simply because you recognize how those things (if even applicable) negatively affect your material conditions. That doesn't mean they are "evil". Viruses aren't evil but I can still consider them undesirable.

Now I've seen people bring morality into it, but not everyone that subscribes to Marxism does so.

Aside from the fact that none of that bullshit fucking matters, they will get along and make it work, because if they don't they're going to die, and it probably won't be a peaceful, easy death.

I don't have the time or energy to go into the whole spiel, but long story short, the multi-national corporation has rendered the nation-state and national identity as completely superfluous. If you have the qualities that they're looking for to make them money, their board of directors isn't going to give a shit if you're a kike or a nigger or a honky or a chink or whatever stupid bullshit you view yourself as.

So, fine, organize your idiot identity group, because it literally doesn't matter. MegaCorp is going to keep draining capital from your country until it collapses. But hey, at least when you're starving to death, it will be with a bunch of people that look just like you! And because you all speak the same language, you'll be able to understand the agonized groans of your compatriots as you collectively starve.

As a nation or ethnic group or whatever spook you decide to delude yourself into believing you're a part of, you can't compete with a group that indiscriminately takes in everyone of any kind of talent. Japan has to worry about health care, elderly care, infrastructure spending, international relations, national education, etc etc etc etc. General Electric just has to worry about its bottom line. They don't care about Japan's schools. If they can't find the students there with the education they need, then they'll just look somewhere else.

So, tl;dr, the international character of Capital requires an international character of Communism, because nationalism's limited scope means that an international organization will flatten a national organization, and have no trouble doing it.

fpbp