Here is a quotation I lifted from Two Americas, who lifted part from Anaxarchos:


This is the whole ballgame, right in a few posts here. Anaxarchos said back a couple of years ago that what the people here have in common is not that they "share the same beliefs" or agree about stuff, but rather that we agree about the ground rules for the discussion. We have rejected comparative individual consciousness as the basis for the discussion.

Here's the link to the thread: http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=94846

The salient section begins around post #163 (but the whole thread is well worth the read).


"(W)e agree about the ground rules for the discussion. We have rejected comparative individual consciousness as the basis for the discussion."

This is the bottom line, I think. It ain't about you, it ain't about me, it ain't about what we believe or how we feel; it is about the working class - worldwide. It isn't nitpicking, it isn't doctrine from any direction - it is about being ready.

Another dead-on quotation from Anaxarchos: "We got to make up for a generation. And we gotta do it fast."

THAT'S what this is all about. Personal stories and personal "standing" means zero, or even less. Folks can share any personal anecdotes they wish - and plenty do - but it has no meaning or bearing in the discussions, at all.

I think that sometimes some of us are accused of being too "hard" or "running people off", but that is the opposite of true. If you can't handle the heat in this particular kitchen, then the problem ain't here.

I don't know if this is helpful or not. We aren't too mean and too serious; we ain't mean and serious enough...

People are not really talking about politics, or anything else real, rather they are talking about "my beliefs." They think that is what politics is about, they think that is the only possible way to talk about things. It doesn't really matter what their beliefs are, since approaching politics as beliefs is reactionary regardless of what those beliefs are.

[div class="excerpt"]In his illusion of detachment, the bourgeois imagined himself to be a free man, who could direct the social process without being directed by it, who could determine without being determined. He was thus preoccupied with the epistemological problem of the independent observer, wishing to be cognizant of the laws determining the environment he wished to control without himself being controlled, to determine without himself being caught up in the same web of determinism.[/quote]

Newcomers here assume that we are approaching politics with an "illusion of detachment," that we share a plan for directing the social process. They then think that the goal in politics is to get a person or people into power to rule over us who is "like minded" and "shares our beliefs," and that this will mysteriously happen by some metaphysical process once enough people believe the same way. The only alternative they can imagine to that is some nightmare of a new "system" being imposed on people through brutal force. The only other approach to force that they can imagine is "democracy" - people pulling levers based on their beliefs and then things magically happening as a result. You can see how belief systems then become the topic of discussion, since if the goal is to institute some Utopia - our personal ideas about that Utopia - we cannot know exactly what the outcome will be of any particular step we take. We then have to "believe" that by doing this, that or the other certain results will follow. This is all based on the idea that social conditions are caused by ideas - that reality is merely the product of our imaginations. So, they think that if enough people "imagine peace" that it will "happen" and that the cause of wars is that too many people are "imagining war."

If someone is talking about what society ought to be rather than what it is they are merely guessing about what would get us there. If people think that consciousness creates reality, it becomes very important to them to discuss personal consciousness - peoples' backgrounds (social restraints) that would "explain" them, their own personal "journey," there own personal choices and reasons for those choices and on and on. It really is a bottomless pit, and descending into it gets you farther and farther away from reality.

Here is my belief, my guess, about creating Utopia here at PI, and about what sort of magic incantations or arcane rituals we should be performing in order to convert new people over to our belief system...

Reading Plekhanov and thinking about it constantly the last 48 hours...thinking about what anaxarchos posted...
[div class="excerpt"]"Self-sufficient Criticism, complete and perfect in itself, naturally must not recognize history as it really took place, for that would mean recognizing the base mass in all its mass massiness, whereas the problem is to redeem the mass from massiness. History is therefore liberated from its massiness, and Criticism, which has a free attitude to its object, calls to history, saying: 'You ought to have happened in such and such a way?' All the laws of criticism have retrospective force: history behaved quite differently before the decrees of Criticism than it did after them. Hence mass history, the so-called real history, deviates considerably from critical history ..."

- Engels[/quote]

Plekhanov - "Who is referred to in this passage? Is it the German writers of the 40s, or some of our contemporary 'sociologists,' who gravely discourse on the theme that the Catholic sees the course of historical events in one way, the Protestant in another, the monarchist in a third, the republican in a fourth: and that therefore a good subjective person not only can, but must, invent for himself, for his own spiritual use, such a history as would fully correspond to the best of ideals? Did Engels really foresee our Russian stupidities? Not at all! Naturally, he did not even dream of them, and if his irony, half a century later, fits our subjective thinkers like a glove, this is to be explained by the simple fact that our subjective nonsense has absolutely nothing original in it: it represents nothing more than a cheap Suzdal print from a caricature of that same 'Hegelianism' against which it wars so unsuccessfully ..."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1895/monist/ch05.htm

only I've been reading August Thalhaimer. He was one of the leaders of the German Revolution (which as we know lost their battle with the fascists)

Anyway, you know how Anax talks about the cult of William Z Foster? Well, multiply that by 1000 for Lenin. Thalhaimer (and there are numerous other examples) sounds uncannily like Lenin. In temperament, disposition, analytically..its all there. And this ain't no Cult of Personality shit like Stalin or Mao.

All of these guys hark back to Marx and Engels of course, but Lenin's stamp is also unmistakeable.

Its ridiculously easy to pick out who's "real" and who's not just by starting to read (its like when you first read some of the KKE literature). And, actually, I was perusing letters written by Khruschev too. Yeah, there's a little bit of "peaceful coexistence" there, but you also see what real statesmanship is like (imagine if our resident "Genius" were writing of someone worthy rather than Kuchinich and Feingold).

I wonder what TIA thought when Khruschev revealed Kennedy for the midget he was..khruschev fucking owned the bastard.

Fuck the second guessing, fuck the sniping from afar, fuck the detached hand-wringing (well, how would *your* system improve things..?), we don't need to "include" or "tolerate" none of that shit.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago and China came up and all he wanted to talk about was Three Gorges and how it was "an ecological catastrophe" and "unncessary" and was "brutally displacing a million peasants" and therefore our "solidarity" should lie with those "oppressed" million.

The greatest power generating facility in the world -- costing who knows how many billion and taking a generation plus to construct -- something China's been contemplating for the better part of a century. Unnecessary, frivilous, brutal he says and with that hes off to side with the displaced peasants, at least on various internet forums (the fate of which peasants is not even clear, incidentally).

Three Gorges is an ecological and cultural catastrophe, yet it provides undeniable benefits in the short term. And yeah, I know about the long term, we're all dead.

How to reconcile this is something I struggle with. Consider the Aswan High Dam, which I've thought about a bit. It provides millions with electricity, an undeniable benefit. However, like every dam it is a silt trap and that silt has been the lifeblood of Egypt for 4 millenia. Nowadays petro based fertilizers must be purchased, with all of the additional labor which that implies, substituting for that which was free. It is likely that the fecundity of Mediterranean Sea fisheries has been adversely affected. We don't, can't do the of cost/benefit analysis necessary in this society, though I would expect better from a rational economic system.

History winds it's own course and hindsight is golden. There ain't nothin' for it but to soldier on, can't hardly get no worse. I find it difficult to blithely say 'too bad' about that extinct dolphin, is all.

(Man, you'd think I'd know better by now)

and so is Greenpeace, and PETA, and NOW, and Code Pink and every other group with a "humane" or "moral" or "concerned" cause. And they all have the most admirable sense of "empathy" and "fairness" too.

BP, did you ever look up a guy Anax mentioned once or twice, AM Babu? See, everything we know about China and North Korea and Vietnam is all backwards in a sense. As Babu reminded us, much of Asia (not counting India which stayed behind) could be alot worse off -- it could be Africa

The difference was that those countries pursued a socialist direction which was focused on developing heavy industry and creating a large cadre of industrial workers. The story of the turnaround in not just China but also North Korea and Vietnam closely comes to mirror that of the Soviet Union in turns of its success on an absolute scale (but yes, uneven in turns of what is produced -- they were working hard on fixing that however)

We know where things started to go horribly wrong, but don't miss the big picture. We know how Socialism is built because we've seen it happen and what it took. Thats our compass, every other kind sports a needle that shifts with the wind.

PS I think your argument is that it could be done better. No kidding. But it can't become a cause celebre because eventually that puts you in the camp holding sings that read "The Revolution Could Be Done Better"

And which chinstroker does that remind you of..?

Exactly so. First things first.

...between personal belief and actual politics that I've ever heard.

Thank you.

(And yes, I am back.)

Welcome back.

I did read this thread. I have an idea what it's about, but I'm not sure. I don't believe that I'm stupid. I think I'm moderately well educated, but obviously not as well as everyone.

What does this have to do with new people to this forum? I don't mean to be rude. I just don't get it.

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/shalom/pia/about.htm

Scroll down and read the whole thing. We are a leftist site (not liberal).

Thanks for stopping by.

Politics is about power and resources and class. The owner class - the capitalists - have power and resources and fuck over the working class (who have no power or resources) worldwide. That is a simple way of stating reality, but it is reality. The working class actually has immense power, but it is currently unrealized and untapped. But things are changing rapidly...