/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eM-ySEDjA

Contrapoints

>>2674112

>even chomsky was agaisnt it.

I think he was just talking about pomo philosophy. Which is pretty shit.

Post modernist philosophy is basically

Feels > reals

Or rather

>Reals dont exist, reals are just projected feels

or something to that extend

>>2674935

sounds Kantian

What postmodernism is: So basically we should have a healthy skepticism towards what we call "morality" and what we think to be "real" but not dismiss everything outright.

What postmodernism is not: Dude like nothing is true or real physics is a myth and 1+1 = 53 lmao

>>2675035

So Climate Change Deniers are postmodernist.

>>2675038

Just because doesn't believe in your metanarrative, regardless of the reason, it doesn;t mean they don't believe in metanarratives at all. That would be like saying that just because you don't believe in the abrahamic, christian god that means that you don't believe in a higher power at all.

>>2675035

So post modernists are agaisnt marxism?

>>2675048

yes they say it is a totalizing narrative or something

>>2675048

They reject marxism, but they're not "anti-marxism."

For example, as an atheistm, I reject christianity, but I am not anti-christianity, nor am I anti-christian. I don't want random innocent christians dead.

Postmodernity as a cultural-historical condition spurred by developments in capitalism (see: Jameson's "Postmodernism: or the cultural logic of late capitalism) should be differentiated from Postmodernism as a blanket term for a philosophical movement that begins as early as Heidegger and Husserl (some might even say Kierkegaard).

We are all postmodernists in the former definition. The latter definition is fairly useless, and it makes far more sense to talk about philosophers who fall under that term as individual philosophies.

>>2675048

They reject grand narratives and thus materialism and class struggle.

Post-modernism is anti-communist and don't let any retard tell you otherwise.

>>2674112

i'm not into philosophy, but i love post-modern art. and i'm not even an artist, i study STEM shit, but i can explain why i grew from hating post-modern art to loving it. think about the reaction the art gives you, and about the emotions and thoughts you have. i realized that my extreme hatred of post-modern art was actually a testament to how effective it was, because no other art produced such an extreme response. if you're making a post about why post-modern stuff is shit, post-modern stuff is doing a damn fine job and showing its effectiveness.

i'm really looking forward to what comes next. post-modernists tend to think that it's the end-all be-all from what i've read, but fuck it sure as hell isn't if history is to teach us anything. post-modernism seems to give a middle finger to everything we think and care about, and it's going to take something that's not a part of that everything to really take its place.

>>2675063

The poster child postmodernist thinkers hold their precursors in high esteem and consider their methods as logical progressions in their projects. Go read some Roland Barthes and Paul De Man, they're both far far more accessible than Derrida.

Can anybody tell me if this video got it right? I watched but I'm still not too sure what postmodernism is.

https://youtu.be/PotnyAxuO2Q

>>2675060

Read "Spectres of Marx" by Derrida

>>2675042

White people are weird

>>2675109

>it's just random paint splatters

It can be but that is a terrible example of it. There is clear intent in composition there. And not all postmodern art is abstract expressionism (random paint splatters).

>>2675109

Socialist realism is the worst thing socialism ever produced and enjoying it is doing the Nazi's work for them. The worst thing Lenin ever did was hold back constructivism and not wholly endorse it as the state's aesthetic (his aesthetic tendencies were ironically inherited from Peter I), and I absolutely believe that the trajectory of the USSR would have been radically altered if the Avant Garde spirit was kept alive and supported by the state. Claims to realism, to showing "how it really is," is doing the conservative's work for them. In this way, the Surrealists and the Situationists are the true models of a revolutionary aesthetic.

There is literally no difference between Nazi Propaganda, Socialist Realism, and Norman Rockwell.

>>2675138

Socialist Realms is pretty good. Modern Art and Post-Modern Art is Decadent, Anti-Proletarian, Elitists, and inherently Capitalist. It needs to be done away with.

>>2675147

The "realism" expressed is nothing more than ideology rendered permanent. In it the individual is hollowed out into an idealized role, it's capitalist physiognomy and character that destroys the individual into universal subject. Here is the worker, here is the war hero, here is the idol to emulate. It operates on the same level of magazine advertisement: here is the person that you are distilled into role and function, here is the product and pose you must, as the ideal we have made you to be, own and submit to. Notice in the Stalin painting the individuals become nothing more than instruments of the idol they carry. They aren't propellers of the figure, do not together form the whole which Stalin is built, but are instead built for the task of carrying him, they own no purpose other than to confirm to the model which they have been molded into.

This relationship is the same as that of advertisement, of commodity fetishism. The "realism" that is being constructed in no way reflects the "way things really are," but instead creates that stagnant world which is then forced into the real, within which everyone is forced to find their role which is really the same role: the consumer, the subject, the laborer who is nothing more than laborer, the father carving the turkey during Thanksgiving dinner, the ubermensch soldier, etc. Realisms are wholly undialectical, and the dialectical response must always be perpetual iconoclasm: the aesthetic manifestation of permanent revolution. Go read Benjamin and Adorno.

>>2675147

>it's elitist

Kek if anything the highly technical nature of realist painting renders it an elitist endeavor. Your average prole doesn't have the time nor the access to training required to get to that level of technical skill. If you're really trying to champion proletarian art, whatever that means, you should be shilling folk or outsider art.

>>2675172

Socialist Realism is proletarian and anti-elitist because the common man, the prol is he centerpiece of the painting. Not some paint bucket. Also unlike voo-doo art. Socialist Realism doesn’t require people to square circles to think it has meaning. Meaning in socialist realism is obvious, upfront, and easy to decipher.

caring what creative pursuits other people have outside of their normal labor is an inherently bourgeois and exploitative thought process

>>2675210

This is patently untrue. Aesthetics and politics are inseparable.

>>2675035

>Marxism is a grand narrative

>can only be resolved by the workers overthrowing their capitalist masters and building communism, with which the workers will live in a paradise on earth.

Why are you guys like this? Have any of you actually read Marx? Was /leftypol/ taken over by the fbi, and now I am being honeypotted for kicks?

Holy fuck some of you are philosophical cesspools. You cant read for anything. Marx makes several simple analyses, and notes obvious developmemts in history, and you claim he has established a metanarrative. By the sort of "logic" in this post, any science is a metanarrative. The moment you observe and make a hypothesis, you have made a narrative. If you observe the production relationships of the proletariat and the bourgeois, you have created a narrative. If you notice there were exploited groups in the past, you have created a narrative. If you notice these classes eventually developed into new classes, you have created a narrative. If you DARE to believe people are xploited for their value, and that they can reclaim that value, you are a pie in the sky utopian and guilty of creating a narrative. None of you are free of wrong think. All of you have engaged in narratives. NONE of you are free from reality.

I think that in a lot of ways, this is very ironically true, really. As in, so many "marxists" and "realists" reject reality and construct these illusions, but do so for reality.

Every day, every hour, how many "marxists" are repenting for the evils of the Marxists? How many "marxists" are consistently defacing and apologizing for material reality? To the "marxist", nothing is necessary, nothing is real. Everything is the vulgar "reality", the only necessity, the only real thing is this reality. Any actual analysis of reality is a narrative, a spook, an exploitation in the making. Anything other than this holy, irreducible reality is too much for the "marxist" to understand. The USSR could have been perfect if… If only we could all… If only a Socialist meme… Nothing is good enough to them, yet they incessantly DEMAND reality. They live the bitesized, cute revolution of Cuba, and they hate the forced reality of the USSR. They love everything that they havent been forced to look at, and anything taht earns their gaze turns to ash right before them. Every revolution is betrayed, every hierarchy is unjust, everyone is a sheep, everyone is better than them…. It goes on infinitely, with every single thing the "marxist" looks at cracking and dying before their very eyes.

The only thing the "marxist" can bear to look at are his own ideas. The only thing that can stay perfect and immune to his caustic gaze are his grand narratives, his illusions. In place of reality, he has the "reality" within his own mind. In his mind, there exist irreducible and perfect concepts. Within the "marxist" mind, reality is subsumed by the reality that could have been. Everything is deconstructed, and there is really no connection between what one "marxist" and another deconstruct. The poster Im replying to, for example, believes that an accurate depiction of productive relations is a narrative. Another "marxist" may reject this, perhaps he "agrees" with Marx, but he believes the proletariat are backward and useless. They are conflicting in what they choose not to believe, but what they have done is the same. They have both rejected the complex reality of things for the vulgar simplicity of the one true "reality".

You guys sound like fresh off the raft /pol/ immigrants.

>>2674112

Dali was a postmodern artist, jesus christ possibly only just the most famous one.

Postmodernism is a reaction to the horrors of WWI and WWII. Reason, progress, and science were supposed to take us to a beautiful age, and it didn't. Instead it brought one of the worst wars the western world has seen. "Science" doesn't give you a base for ethical action, but oh boy did we learn some things from nazi tinker-torturing.

https://youtu.be/EHtvTGaPzF4

>>2675227

I've noticed it too, posting has gotten significantly worse and significantly more passionate.

>>2674112

>even chomsky was agaisnt it

lol why everyone on this board dislikes chomsky so much

>>2675227

>Marx makes several simple analyses, and notes obvious developmemts in history, and you claim he has established a metanarrative

How is dialectical materialism not a metanarrative? The narrative by which the "actual" narrative relies on.

>The moment you observe and make a hypothesis, you have made a narrative

What's being critiqued is the principle by which the relations unfold, the manner in which the narrative is being constructed and to which, in a sense, it is obliged to conform. The relations themsleves aren't necessarily being denied (Foucault, Jameson, Baudrillard are all foremost concerned about power structures), and neither is necessarily the theory. There is such a huge difference between a critique and a rejection.

>Any actual analysis of reality is a narrative, a spook, an exploitation in the making, blah blah blah.

Are you drunk? Calm down. Postmodernists aren't rejecting reality; the major ones were all marxists. Go read yourself. This is almost embarrassing to read.

>>2675232

>Postmodernism is a reaction to the horrors of WWI and WWII. Reason, progress, and science were supposed to take us to a beautiful age, and it didn't.

*sigh* getting real tired of this schtick. The majority of people are living better off than ever, especially in comparison to feudal times. Nearly all the “horrors” that post-modernists find in modernity can be found in other eras of history and examples can be found that are often as bad or worse as some of the nasty stuff from modern history.

>b-but what makes it more horrible is that it’s happening in this super-specific arbitrary way that wasn’t possible before modernity. Can’t prove the Romans killed people with gas chambers or used atomic bombs this is saying nothing about the real genocides they actually committed? I win again!

I’m sure all this post-modern sophistry would have been quite a consolation for a castrated Arab slave in pre-20th century times.

>>2675268

I think it’s worth qualifying my post, that while I think most people are better off than they were under feudalism, I do not buy into the false-accounting of much of the Davos poverty reduction claims most poverty reduction has been in China anyways. That being said, neoliberals do have a point when they point out that anti-biotics couldn’t be bought at any price prior to the 20th century, nor were smart phones and other use-values we take for granted. This shows the poverty of their own estimates but it is factually correct to point out that now even many of the people who are in the poorest half of the global population can afford things like anti-biotics for a sick child, toothbrushes, t-shirts, and even smartphones muh iPhone xDDDD

>>2675278

*dies from a social construction*

>>2675281

Hilarious, here's another one from the same channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UpSoosy9ws

Read Ghosts of My Life by Mark Fisher.

Also be wary of chuds that claim that Baudrillard, Derrida, et al. were postmodernists. Surefire sign that they haven't read them. They were describing/explaining the postmodern condition, not advocating it.

>>2675268

>this is saying nothing about the real genocides they actually committed

The form and ends of genocide have a profound impact on the meaning of the genocide. Genocide as a formal category says nothing about the content of each individual genocide; the mechanized and deeply alienating nature of the Holocaust has no historical counterpart.

The exact same can be said of the everyday horrors faced in (post)modernity; the material conditions which exist today radically change the form and content of alienation. This is basic historical materialism. These aren't "arbitrary changes" these are precisely the monumental changes in society that occurred between feudalism and capitalism. Every new socioeconomic system has no historical counterpart.

>The majority of people are living better off than ever, especially in comparison to feudal times

this is saying nothing about the horrors that are embedded in that "better" reality This argument also completely misses the point. Nobody is saying things are better now than they were in the middle ages; this doesn't mean one should completely accept the shit that comes with it because "it's better than the shit 200 years ago." The fact that things are suddenly more available to more people doesn't counteract the violence that produces that accessibility, and it doesn't negate the possibility for a better system that eliminates that violence.

Read Origins of Totalitarianism, read Dialectic of Enlightenment.

>>2675284

>They were describing/explaining the postmodern condition, not advocating it.

You're right, they're not advocating this new condition at all, but they're also still postmodernists: the postmodern philosophical tradition they fall under.

>>2675289

Based benji

>>2675283

You know he really believed that, right? And his defenders come out of the work by arguing that the radical epistemological “skepticism” of his work that has been used by Holocaust deniers, AIDS denialists and other cooks has somehow been misused.

No, many of the kooks who have been influenced by him are actually interpreting his work correctly. Especially in the case of AIDs denial though he never said anything publicly about it

>>2675297

I miss Fisher

>>2675308

When your philosophy eschews universalism, you cannot claim to be a universalist. Marxism is not a particularist tendency, so they cannot rightly claim to be Marxist. This is not to say that they're not like leftists, but to assume that disagreement with the assumptions of postmodernism is equivalent to dismissal of all of its constituent values OR claims to values is simply a wishful conclusion for someone who wants to make trite judgements like you

>>2675317

>trite judgements

Ironic.

>>2675297

Quality post. w/r/t to the "waning of historicity," the acceleration of time, and the decline of long-experience, memory, home, Benjamin offers some, as usual, prophetic analyses on this subject:

From The Storyteller:

"Villemessant , the founder of Le Figaro, characterized the nature of information in a famous formulation. “To my readers,” he used to say, “an attic fire in the Latin Quarter is more important than a revolution in Madrid.” This makes strikingly clear that it is no longer intelligence coming from afar, but the information which supplies a handle for what is nearest that gets the readiest hearing. The intelligence that came from afar—whether the spatial kind from foreign countries or the temporal kind of tradition—possessed an authority which gave it validity, even when it was not subject to verification. Information, however, lays claim to prompt verifiability. The prime requirement is that it appear “understandable in itself. ” Often it is no more exact than the intelligence of earlier centuries was. But while the latter was inclined to borrow from the miraculous, it is indispensable for information to sound plausible. Because of this it proves incompatible with the spirit of storytelling. If the art of storytelling has become rare, the dissemination of information has had a decisive share in this state of affairs."

From On Some Motifs in Baudelaire:

"The greater the share of the shock factor in particular impressions, the more constantly consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the more efficiently it does so, the less do these impressions enter experience (Erfahrung), tending to remain in the sphere of a certain hour in one's life (Erlebnis). Perhaps the special achievement of shock defense may be seen in its function of assigning to an incident a precise point in time in consciousness at the cost of the integrity of its contents. This would be a peak achievement of the intellect; it would turn the incident into a moment that has been lived (Etlebnis). Without reflection there would be nothing but the sudden start, the sensation of fright which, according to Freud, confirms the failure of the shock defense. Baudelaire has portrayed this condition in a harsh image. He speaks of a duel in which the artist, just before being beaten, screams in fright.”

and later on in the same work:

"A touch of the finger now sufficed to fix an event for an unlimited period of time.The Camera gave the moment a posthumous shock, as it were. Haptic experiences of this kind were joined by optic ones, such as are supplied by the advertising pages of a newspaper or the traffic of a big city. Moving through this traffic involves the individual in a series of shocks and collisions. At dangerous intersections, nervous impulses flow through him in rapid succession, like the energy from a battery. Baudelaire speaks of a man who plunges into the crowd as into a reservoir of electric energy. Circumscribing the experience of the shock, he calls this man "a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness."

Taken together, we can see Benjamin as starting to see the reality that Jameson would go on to describe as now-entrenched. The "Shock-Reality" corresponds both to the alienating industrialization of society and the decline of Storytelling, a necessarily historical form, into that of instantaneous "information," whose value "does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender itself completely and explain itself to it without losing any time." An information age, therefore, is that of a continuous now experience whose meaning is lost the moment the information is understood. We of course can see this in cases of information of shootings, scandals, wars, etc being thrown at the individual incessantly and immediately forgotten: this, according to Benjamin at least, is by design. But what does this have to do with capitalism, particularly late capitalism? Benjamin goes on in On Motifs to talk about the origins of shock-reality in the repetitive and disconnected actions of the factory worker–the pulling of the lever at one moment has no relation to the pulling of the next, and so on. Perhaps, and I think Fisher talks about this in Capitalist Realism, that the world not only imbues things, all things, with economic value, but also the quality of information, of an immediate intelligibility that "explains itself", particularly in economic terms, but not only. In other words, just as all things are equal on the plane in virtue of their economic evaluation, things acquire an equal value in virtue of their being information, on the twitter feed, on the newspaper, etc. Debord would also be an obvious person to turn to here, but I'm not so well versed in his thought.

>>2675318

Can't help but toss a little back, bud

>>2675290

>this is saying nothing about the horrors that are embedded in that "better" reality

And there it is. Post-modernists almost always build a fall-back position into their writing so that they can say what they really mean without getting nailed down on it, or if one position gets falsified they fall back on another one. For instance, you raise doubt on whether things are really better now with scare quotes on the one hand then you say that no one is saying that things aren't better than they were in the Middle Ages.

Then you wonder why you get fedora'd gentlemen hitting you with data on how things are better now than they were in the past–because it actually is a reasonable interpretation of your position. Again, you have to downplay the rather massive problems of the pre-modern past to claim that there's been no progress or that its only nominal progress.

>this doesn't mean one should completely accept the shit that comes with it because "it's better than the shit 200 years ago."

I wonder why you interpreted my post this way; its not like I was advocating leaving shit as it is just because I defend modernity and am skeptical about post-modernist historical claims. Btw do Focault fans still pretend like he didn't defend traditionalism? Because there is tons of evidence that he was sympathetic towards traditionalism in his writings despite being a fag who advocated radical skepticism but especially about the epistemological origins of our skepticism.

>the mechanized and deeply alienating nature of the Holocaust has no historical counterpart.

I'm gonna preface this by pointing out that its a Zionist idea that the Holocaust is without parallel in history. That's a nice conceit, but unfortunately it has very little meaning giving the sheer variety of factors which makes any given event in history "unique"; it is extremely unlikely you will ever play the same poker game twice, for instance.

1. the vast majority of Holocaust victims were killed with rather "primitive" means: hunger, bullets, forced labor, forced marches etc.

2. the gas chambers were very primitive, literally it was just a cellblock that had a hole they could chunk some insecticide into. Very makeshift and pretty basic. Rather out of place in an avant-garde modern war and far less thought out than the incinerators the open pits were more effective, ironically enough

3. The whole bit about the bureaucratic nature of the Holocaust, banality of evil etc, etc. was really just a meme to rehabilitate the political establishment of West Germany (ex "How could good, educated, and proper people do such awful things?") in fact, this narrative has never been able to explain the extreme savageness and contempt for the victims shown many but not all perpetrators of the Holocaust. It was far more intimate than it is often portrayed.

4. untangling the Holocaust from other Nazi crimes such as Barbarossa and the other colonial invasions is an exercise in utility. The Holocaust as an idea is really a way from distracting from the colonial anti-communist aspect of the Nazi endeavor, this is why other "victims" of the Holocaust don't get as much screen-time as Jews despite being as numerous or suffering just as much (Roma). They just don't fit the narrative where you leave the classroom determined to support apartheid Israel against Godless commies and shitskins

5. Auschwitz was not the first death camp. The Germans actually created the first death camp at Shark Island in Namibia and many of the novel innovations of the Nazi genocides actually appeared there first

The Japanese use of bioweapons in China comes much closer to being a truly modern genocide not that bioweapons are new than the Holocaust tbh

>Read Origins of Totalitarianism, read Dialectic of Enlightenment.

<read a liberal anti-communist and a useful idiot of the CIA and the West German establishment

Too bad I've already read a good bit of their work but I'll pass on the reread, thanks.

>>2675344

*exercise in futility

>>2675035

>Marxist: (…) building communism, with which the workers will live in a paradise on earth.

unbanning /leftpol/ was a mistake

>>2675344

>For instance, you raise doubt on whether things are really better now with scare quotes on the one hand then you say that no one is saying that things aren't better than they were in the Middle Ages.

I'm saying that "better" doesn't mean good. Your position of "putting things in perspective" does little but justify the current state of things.

>Btw do Focault fans still pretend like he didn't defend traditionalism?

I wouldn't know.

>the vast majority of Holocaust victims were killed with rather "primitive" means: hunger, bullets, forced labor, forced marches etc.

This is different from other genocides. The rounding up and placing into conditions that have no contingency to external reality is a new movement in mass-murder.

>the gas chambers were very primitive

The steam engine was very primitive. The procedural placement of a person into cemented rooms filled with only recently put to use gas technology is a new development. It doesn't have a parallel.

>all of 3

The banality of evil has to do with the fact of documenting mass murder as though it were an office building. Arendt's point is about the deep-seated bureaucratization of life and death that have become basic parts of life. The emotion one feels toward the process of indexing, filling out papers, archiving, i.e., the modern white-collar workplace says nothing about the inherently sterile and banal qualities of the process itself. You're missing the point.

>The Holocaust as an idea is really a way from distracting from the colonial anti-communist aspect of the Nazi endeavor

This just isn't true.

>Auschwitz was not the first death camp. The Germans actually created the first death camp at Shark Island in Namibia and many of the novel innovations of the Nazi genocides actually appeared there first

This is such a stupid point, and if anything concedes that the process that carried out the Holocaust was in fact a totally new event in history.

You're a reactionary at best and a crypto-fascist at worst.

>>2675176

artlet here, can I get a rundown on what's going on in this picture here?

>>2675354

>I'm saying that "better" doesn't mean good. Your position of "putting things in perspective" does little but justify the current state of things.

Actually post-modern pessimism is the real justifying ideology of our moment. We see it not only almost everywhere in the developed world, in every day life, in media. If modernity was a big old horrific mistake then the revolutions that created it were mistakes, the ideologies that arise out of it (e.g. Marxism, most of anarchism) also suffer from the same epistemological flaws, trying to overthrow modern capitalism will only reinscribe the oppressive codes of modernity. This was actually Focault’s entire fucking point and one he devoted a fair bit of his academic career which was showing, in his own words, how the works of Marx could lead to the horrors of the Gulag.

Contrast this with my position, which by defending modernity affirms that revolutions of the future can be successful and meaningfully improve our lives.

>This just isn't true.

It really is. Try separating the Hunger Order from the conditions of intentional starvation in German work camps. You really can’t. The first people to be gassed on a mass scale weren’t Jews but Soviet POWs. Imagine the liquidation of Soviet POWs without Barbarossa and Nazi anti-communism.The Holocaust is only one facet of a whole collage of horrors of Nazi rule which were based on anti-communism, colonialism and all out reaction. It’s hard to even meaningfully explain how the Holocaust could happen without these other parts of the whole picture. The hunger plan and other aspects of Nazi rule in the occupied USSR probably claimed more victims than the Holocaust—thinking critically it’s extremely difficult to untangle the two. Contrast the difference between a massacre of non-Jewish, non-Roma Soviet citizens begin (not Holocaust) with the massacre of Soviet POWs (technically part of the Holocaust though not a major feature)

>This is different from other genocides. The rounding up and placing into conditions that have no contingency to external reality is a new movement in mass-murder.

What the hell are you even talking about? Indians massacred starved and placed on reservations and even prisons that we would now call concentration camps. The Boers were placed in concentration camps. The Herero and Nama people were also displaced and put into concentration camps.

>You're a reactionary at best and a crypto-fascist at worst.

<anti-modernist calls me a reactionary and a crypto

Ironic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26fIBA7O5Ag

Hot off the presses

>>2675308

Notice the phrase "were Marxists". None of those people continued to be Marxists after becoming postmodernists. Are going to argue now that a Neocon or a Fascist who was a Marxist in his youth is still a Marxist because of that period?

>>2675411

that poster talks like a Petersonoid so he probably does believe that

>>2675411

>Are going to argue now that a Neocon or a Fascist who was a Marxist in his youth is still a Marxist because of that period?

Some ☭TANKIE☭s here have argued that exact same thing, except for Trotskyists who became neocons.

>>2675109

honestly the one of the left is much more visually pleasing

>>2675035

>a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some examples:

I wouldn't say that Marxist think communism is the end pf history. It is simply the next logical step in social evolution. The material conditions created under communism will open up possibilities for something new, exactly how feudalism transitioned into capitalism.

This thread is embarrassing

>>2675359

Well the title of the painting is MOPR which tells us a bit about who is behind the prison bars in the painting. The MOPR was an aid organization created by the Soviets to support political prisoners internationally so the painting is depicting all those communists who have been persecuted for their beliefs.

>>2675284

>Also be wary of chuds that claim that Baudrillard, Derrida, et al. were postmodernists. Surefire sign that they haven't read them.

Here's me going through The Mirror of Production by Jean Baudrillard (translation by Mark Poster). Page 30:

<the double potentiality of man as needs and labor power, this double "generic" face of univers al man, is only man as produced by the system of political economy

The idea that people have abilities and needs is a spook now.

Page 32 got lots of words and sentence fragments in quotes and gives as a source the 1844 manuscripts of Marx. There is a note by the translator: "I have not been able to locate this quotation." (I suppose the bit there about labor becoming a prime vital need Baudrillard got from Critique of the Gotha Programme.)

<There is neither a mode of production nor production in primitive societies.

(That's page 49.) He seems (he is a very unclear writer, despite being very verbose) to think of production as something that is necessarily complex; but simple acts of extraction, like plucking fruits, can also be put under the umbrella of production. So, when defined that way, yes they did have production.

<Marxism is the projection of the class struggle and the mode of production onto all previous history

Division of society with different people doing different tasks (sometimes a division fixed by birth) predates capitalism. Hierarchy, with some people owning multiple times as much wealth as others (whether you look at square meters of land or owned consumed things measured in work time to produce them), predates capitalism. That the biggest differences in wealth don't come from one being proportionally better at plucking fruits or what have you, but from a position in society that allows control over other people and being a parasite also predates capitalism.

Page 70: Once again Baudrillard seems to quote some other thinker, and the translator can't find the sources.

On page 82 is Baudrillard's pomo solipsism in a nutshell, when he talks about primitive agrarian societies (as he imagines them):

<Effort is not "invested labor power" recovered many times over in value at the end of a production process. It is in a different form as full of ritual as the exchange-gift lost and given without economic calculation of return and compensation.

I'm pretty sure that when something takes time to do, that aspect does not disappear just because you stop measuring and recording the time. Even for a group that doesn't use money, an anthropologist taking notes of the physical inputs and outputs can use this data for analysis and help with predicting growth, stability, or decline, whether these sort of calculations are completely alien to the group or not. If the result of the harvest spells out imminent doom, your refusal to read the data won't make the problem go away.

Page 122:

<This new ideological structure, that plays on the hieroglyphs of the code, is much more illegible than that which played on productive energy. This manipulation, that plays on the faculty of producing meaning and difference, is more radical than that which plays on labor power.

Word games by big thinkers are more important than what's actually going on, don't you forget that, you anti-intellectuals!

Page 134: Baudrillard says that

<there is a major role for students, youth who are disqualified in advance, voluntarily or not, as well as all types of social groups, of regional communities, ethnic or linguistic, because, by the process of the centralization and technocratic pyramidalization of the system, they fall into marginality, into the periphery, into the zone of dis­affection and irresponsibility. Excluded from the game, their revolt henceforth aims at the rules of the game. Desocialized, they defeat the capitalist social reality principle, and not merely their exploitation by the system (…) The Black revolt aims at race as a code, at a level much more radical than economic exploitation.

Breaking news: Idpol more important than class, says well-off academic.

Page 152:

<Marxism is incapable of theorizing total social practice (including the most radical form of Marxism) except to reflect it in the mirror of the mode of production. It cannot lead to the dimensions of a revolutionary "politics."

Verdict: A mountain of anti-class-struggle make-believe POMO BULLSHIT. Worse than Jordan Peterson.

>>2675707

>Baudrillard is too hard!! must b pomo shit, antimarxist :- (

>>2675725

1. "Marxism is the projection of the class struggle and the mode of production onto all previous history…" Do you agree with this statement, y/n?

2. "The Black revolt aims at race as a code, at a level much more radical than economic exploitation." – Do you agree with this statement, y/n?

3. Do you think these statements are statements compatible with a Marxist perspective?

>>2675725

Explain how that posters interpretations are different to yours then, and why they may be wrong. Genuinely interested because some of that is not within the proper context and you seem to know something about it.

>>2675411

They're all dead you fucking moron.

>>2675350

>non-argument

>>2675671

Sure but there may come a time when there will be nothing more to progress to, in paradigm terms, notwithstanding just time progression. I mean what if we researched everything in the world, wouldn't science stop progressing once we knew everything and ran out of things to study? Isn't this possible? We know the stops and gaps in logic and philosophy, so why not material reality?

>>2675232

>Postmodernism is a reaction to the horrors of WWI and WWII. Reason, progress, and science were supposed to take us to a beautiful age, and it didn't. Instead it brought one of the worst wars the western world has seen. "Science" doesn't give you a base for ethical action, but oh boy did we learn some things from nazi tinker-torturing.

Then why are there more Post-Modeernists in America then Europe considering the World Wars scorched Europe and barely scratched America?

>>2675232

>Reason, progress, and science were supposed to take us to a beautiful age, and it didn't. Instead it brought one of the worst wars the western world has seen.

You believe that somebody who thinks in a very logical and rational way will sooner or later end at Nazi positions?

>>2675354

>>Auschwitz was not the first death camp. The Germans actually created the first death camp at Shark Island in Namibia and many of the novel innovations of the Nazi genocides actually appeared there first

>This is such a stupid point, and if anything concedes that the process that carried out the Holocaust was in fact a totally new event in history.

Either you literally believe that Jews are more worthy than other people and so mass murdering Jews is especially vile, or you aren't quite aware of the extent of the record of mass murder capitalists have. Probably a bit of the former (not necessarily something you are really conscious of) and a ton of the latter.

>>2675767

> "Marxism is the projection of the class struggle and the mode of production onto all previous history…"

Insofar as all models of history, particularly models which project, own a teleology, are situated towards some final ends–have a project, insofar as all methods of interpretation are the projection of phenomenon onto a model, and that model onto events, yes, I absolutely agree. This point isn't a rejection, it's a qualification of what Marxist methodology objectively is. I don't see Baudrillard suggesting that there's any way out of this paradigm.

>"The Black revolt aims at race as a code, at a level much more radical than economic exploitation."

Let's read again the full quote:

<by the process of the centralization and technocratic pyramidalization of the system, they fall into marginality, into the periphery, into the zone of dis­affection and irresponsibility. Excluded from the game, their revolt henceforth aims at the rules of the game. Desocialized, they defeat the capitalist social reality principle, and not merely their exploitation by the system

Notice, first of all, the use of centralization and technocratic pyramidalization of the system which, to me, seems to roughly align with what we would call the (super)structure of capitalism. Baudrillard's starting point at least in this passage, is a Marxist understanding of capitalism. His claim here is that there are groups in society that do not fit into the typical worker-owner model, but have in fact been forcefully excluded from that model. It's an alienation, according to Baudrillard, that goes beyond the basic outline of laborer to labor, labor to commodity, commodity to laborer–it's an alienation of the alienated from this original system of alienation. "De-socialization": expulsion from the already alienated social. ''they defeat the capitalist social reality principle, and not merely their exploitation by the system'." Let's pair this with " “[Marxism] convinces men that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power."

Together, the claim is that a proper way of pursuing a change, a revolution, in capitalism is by attacking the articulation of the social subject not merely as a laboring subject. That the articulation of the individual purely as laborer is itself already playing into the capitalist game; it's a proper articulation of what a subject is under capitalism, but not what they really are and ought to be.

>Do you think these statements are statements compatible with a Marxist perspective?

Yes. I think Baudrillard considers himself to be continuing the Marxist project, it's deconstructing the basic premises of Marxism in order to build them back up again, but only better. I'm unconvinced that this isn't a progress (dialectical progression, even) in the Marxist project. A better charge would be that Baudrillard is misreading Marx, and that everything he says here is already contained within the basic Marxist structure and project. I'd find that much more compelling.

>>2675945

>Insofar as all models of history, particularly models which project, own a teleology, are situated towards some final ends–have a project, insofar as all methods of interpretation are the projection of phenomenon onto a model, and that model onto events, yes, I absolutely agree.

Which is a rejection of historical materialism per se, as merely a "model" that projects a "teleology" onto history. Your acceptance of this point is premised on a strain of idealism that relies upon relegating historical materialism to metanarrative.

>This point isn't a rejection, it's a qualification of what Marxist methodology objectively is.

Certainly, it is, if you're coming from the tradition of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche where the noumenal is eternally separate from the phenomenal. At that point, "objectively" there is only the "projection of phenomenon onto a model," but one has already rejected a dialectical view, even in one's language.

>His claim here is that there are groups in society that do not fit into the typical worker-owner model, but have in fact been forcefully excluded from that model

Are students really excluded from capitalism as workers? It certainly isn't at all true in the U.S., nor are marginal communities excluded from capitalism in the West but rather compelled to participate like every other. This entire view presupposes some outside of capitalism that these communities are forced into, that "zone of disaffection and irresponsibility" that forces such communities into a "revolt" against the rules of the game, as they are supposed to attack the ideological superstructure in the form of the reality principle.

Yet we see this nowhere in reality. Attacks by marginal communities merely on that superstructure, the "capitalist social reality principle," has not led to any revolutionary change, nothing in the direction of socialism. Attacking only that principle seems to lead in precisely the opposite direction, as political movements based on marginal identity have continuously demonstrated, but this view has been useful to petit-bourgeois with an ascribed "marginalized" identity, as they can attack the superstructure to benefit themselves without actually attacking capitalism itself in any significant way.

>>2675945

>>"Marxism is the projection of the class struggle and the mode of production onto all previous history…"

>insofar as all methods of interpretation are the projection of phenomenon onto a model, and that model onto events, yes, I absolutely agree.

Your writing is so slippery it's amusing. You apparently haven't even digested the entire content of post >>2675707 (of course, you end up quoting from it, since you haven't even read the book it's about). Baudrillard denies the validity of concepts like classes and surplus in pre-capitalist times, and his argument is purely idealist: that these concepts can't describe those societies because people were not aware of them.

>Notice, first of all, the use of centralization and technocratic pyramidalization of the system which, to me, seems to roughly align with what we would call the (super)structure of capitalism.

Centralization of capital is certainly NOT part of the super-structure as Marxists use that term. You seem to roleplay as one here.

Start reading Marx anytime.

>>2675941

>You believe that somebody who thinks in a very logical and rational way will sooner or later end at Nazi positions?

No, I'm a marxist. I was explaining how postmodernism came to be. I think you might have misread what I was saying.

>>2676102

lol wrong flag

>>2675926

Good question, I don't know who has more. But I thought there were more Euros.

That being said, I'm giving the artbook textbook lesson on postmodernism, if you're looking for deeper truth then it might be worth investigating.

The only philosophy you need is pyrrho. When one doubts everything you are free to simply use ideas that seem to work ok, and dont have to worry about whether they are true or not.

>>2676104

Actually, it's the flag of post-modern philosophy.

>>2674935

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZQJFbrqjUY

>>2675227

>everyones an ideologue except me

t. brainlet

>>2675232

preach brother

>>2675235

he is not edgy enough

>>2675278

agree, cuck philosophy is highly recommended, his vids are great, especially the stephen hicks one

>>2675297

>attack on public services

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>All these artlets posting about how they don't like paintings because they make them feel funny

>>2676988

>>everyones an ideologue except me

>everything's ideology except my metanarrative ideology

Unless you begin with some way to distinguish between what is and isn't ideology, every view can come to be termed as "ideology," which is to say that none is. This view of "ideology" has been corrosive to the left, as it undermines materialism by making it amount to a dishonest form of idealism.

>>2677305

sounds like the cultural marxism meme

could it be?

>>2677389

More like cultural liberalism.

>>2675172

Imagine thinking modern art has ever been a working class phenomenon

>>2675071

she seems nice

>>2683547

why not working class I think it was definetly something radical but quickly coopted by bourgeois hegemony

maybe the hautes are more honest in that they don't pretend to be anything other than elitist. Although now high fashion is trying to be 'urban' and appeal to poor black kids and the suburban white kids who copy them we're seeing something profoundly more dishonest, definetly profoundly more something

>>2674112

>even chomsky was agaisnt it.

Chomsky is full of shit

>>2674935

This is what happens when you unironically watch Jordan Peterson videos

It's a metanarrative that explains to you why metanarratives are bad, and promotes local, subjective experiences as sources of greater authenticity.

Marxism is a metanarrative that is conscious of its being so and seeks to abolish itself.

It's also the only framework of understanding the world that doesn't depend on individual opinions or feelings on anything at all. Of course every such framework can be described as "totalizing", but in terms of analysing social relations by pursuing the logic of liberalism to its own limits, which is basically Marx's critique, there's simply no better alternative framework that I'm aware of. If you reject the basic human capability of abstracting from particulars and forming concepts, you reject the entire scientific endeavor, this doesn't seem a plausible move.

>>2683644

THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS

>>2675042

This neatly summarizes everything that is cancerous in modern society.

>>2675046

So in other words all postmodernists reject the theory of anthropogenic global warming, but not all global warming deniers are postmodernists.

>>2675073

Effortpost coming through

In the video the post-modern is correctly identified as arising from realisation that the tools of modernism that led to the creation of the atomic bomb and other huge developments in technology also led to the creation of world-changing horrors. Although the video author doesn't reference it, the most famous elements of this are Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" or Theodor Adorno's "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz."

Neither of these thinkers are particularly considered 'post-modernists' but they are extremely influential in accounting for the main direction postmodernism has taken. The argument behind these ideas is that the logic of modernist reasoning which as we know is to lead us into a worthwhile future was also applied to running the concentration camps. As you may be aware from the Nuremberg trials, for example, the operation of the concentration camps was such that everyone had their own role, and no-one felt particularly morally responsible for what they were doing. They had targets to meet and their intellect was put to meeting these targets. Anyone who was opposed to what was going on individually felt unable to resist as their own power was limited in the face of the bureaucratic machinery that had been created. The banality of this system allowed for evil on an unimaginable scale. What benefit did our enlightenment values provide us? This was a focal point for the process of post-modernity to begin.

Where the author is trying to establish at 5:10 that "the certainty that institutions would use logic to progress us into the future was shattered. Now there is no longer a unified value system, unified moral system"… is poor. It suggests that there was a unified system before post-modernists destroyed it. Post-modernism concerned itself with revealing that in fact there never was a unified value system, that in fact this process was a metanarrative that obscured reality. The concentration camps and atom bombs are significant examples of this. Another element of this is the post-colonialist stuff like that excerpt of the black woman saying science is a western construct.

He departs from this into talking about endless choice and people finding their own meaning in life. This is a common mistake, as really there are two post-modernisms. There is a cultural postmodernism, as described by Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (PDF available). Then there is an academic post-modernism that is concerned with the ideas I mentioned above. You may guess that cultural post-modernism looks an awful lot like neoliberalism - the extension of market logic and consumer focus into ever more parts of the world and human psyche.

he then spends the rest of the video talking about cultural post-modernism and thinks it is academic post-modernism . This isn't the post-modernism you learn about on campus, so when he says at 7:30 shit like "they reject the scientific method… at a university level this means the humanities reject the old world logic and substitute it with their own. without empiricism they develop their own version of truth through their own version of reason" He is completely off-base. They didn't reject the idea of universal truth. They rejected the idea that it had been evenly applied to create our civilization and studied areas where it was applied impartially since then.

The academic post-modernism is essentially an attempt to re-read the creations of (Western) civilisation and challenge their blindspots. It so happens it was able to do this very easily, which honestly shouldn't be even slightly controversial. He cites at 2:10 the idea that the enlightenment brought us the concept of liberty, freedom, tolerance, constitutional government and progression. Which it did so while expressly excluding women from voting, slaves from freedom, the poor from progression. Another way of looking at it is quantum physics and the fact that we have yet to come to a general unified theory to it. The reexamination of classical mechanics led to what you might call a deconstruction of it. We are stuck with it, but we know it is insufficient. It hasn't Destructed it, but it hasn't yet reconstructed it.

His screed at the end is 100% idiocy and should be completely disregarded. Anyone calling themselves a youtube skeptic is quite possibly mentally incapable of honestly appraising postmodernism short of reciting the wikipedia page.

In closing, the mistake the armored skeptic makes of blending cultural and academic Post-Modernism is a common one, and is the basis for why Nazis think cultural marxism is destroying western values. the confusion between the two lies at the heart of why they are unable to ascribe the process of destruction to neoliberalism as a capitalist logic rather than it being some bumbling old philosophy nerds poisoning the minds of our beautiful aryan children.

>>2684264

Good post, but the main problem is just that they (theorists) exaggarate the suppposed fundamental break with modernism after the holocaust. Yes, for a great number of people this could be construed as the ultimate trauma, but as a human universal? I don't think it's true. The same structural inhumanity brought by trchnology could be seen, and was seen by Marxists, in early capitalism, colonialism, mass slavery etc. The horror of the holocaust was in the degree, ht I don't see it as something that forever alters the way we should approach history.

>>2684272

That is certainly a fair assessment.

>>2684167

yeah.

>>2675042

Kinky

>>2675138

>revolutionary aesthetic

Spoken like a coddled intellectual. There is no such thing as a revolutionary aesthetic, revolution is not an art exhibit. How things look is an afterthought for the post revolutionary peace. The look of any revolutionary movement is merely a hodgepodge of the practical and the contingent.

>>2692535

Read Lukacs