Now people can’t describe anything concretely, so they can never check if their abstractions are even accurate.

The idea of concretizing problems is something ive been thinking about a lot recently, and its surprising how simple yet unnatural it is. When you think about it an abstraction can help aid understanding and can bring us closer to objective reality, but a false abstraction actually is alienating from reality, nature, each other, ourselves.

Also there’s a lot of really smart people who are able to name an abstraction, name the specific concrete occurrence that is contained in or broadly explained by the abstraction, but can’t conceive of or explain any of the steps in between.

We all just out here vibing “trust me bro” and dont even realize it

Okay like of course this perspective is vile. I would never defend it. The people I refer to below are not the same people represented in this tweet.

But the right’s justification for anti immigration makes sense to people. Its the oldest trick in the book! Artificial scarcity? Housing crisis? Employment crisis? Some of us have a rigorous class analysis that can neatly disprove these lies, part of why red scares are such a fundamental component of the right’s culture war (a component many progressive liberals accept unquestioningly.)

But for the average person who doesnt think about stuff that way, the working/middle class swing voter who is simultaneously directly affected by economic and political oppression but deeply confused about the underlying causes, how do we convince them? The pendulum has flipped and Trumps policies are deeply unpopular, but what is the convincing explanation that the whole basis of their logic is flawed? How do we prove that immigrants aren’t the problem?

Its like in avengers, thanos says he will kill half of all people in order to end scarcity in the universe. And none of the heroes even questions his logic. The attitude is like, he’s a bad guy but it would still work. And, no it wouldn’t, scarcity in advanced society is driven by class, not population. Malthus was thoroughly disproved like 150 years ago and yet this myth persists (like the myth of immigration and race-based scarcity).

Because as long as our political strategy amounts to “shame anyone who demonstrates an affective affinity with the right, and vote” we won’t be able to resist the creeping threat of fascism. In 5-10 years it will be full on Nazi shit and I dont want to die in a concentration camp please and thank you

I think you are lacking some context in what is meant by “build non-hierarchal systems.” Anarchists have a robust theoretical understanding of, but to people less acquainted with that understanding, it seems kind of empty and convenient. This jargon problem needs to be better addressed in political education, which is relevant to this discussion.

We conceive of these problems differently. When you (most people in my experience, including myself at one time) conceive of the criminal justice problem, and you locate a logical contradiction, you stop.

However, the primary contradiction in society is created when one majority group, dominates and therefore oppresses the majority. All other contradictions are effects and consequences.

We can’t develop a society free from social contradictions (such as poverty, carcerial justice, oppression, exploitation, racism, queer phobia, etc.,)" until class rule is abolished.

Now, that is very big and abstract. We are back to your FTL dilemma.

So we start with reflecting on the true nature of our material conditions and acting on them. But this is no small undertaking either. We’ve been taught to perceive of certain truths, in a certain way. So our role as individuals is to seek out education and organization, so that we can collectively struggle to reform and attack the basis of negative social contradictions.

In your carcerial justice example, where you describe a dilemma, I see a “site of struggle.” I want to get involved, learn, educate, affect change. Doing this develops us to become the people who will be able to solve these problems, institute reforms, not for the masses but as part of the masses (non-hierarchal). Until so much change has occurred within politics, culture, and material well being of the vast majority for the benefit of all, that revolutionary conditions become apparent. One anarchist formulation of this is called “Dual Power.”

When the people are educated, the power is with us, and the objective reality of class antagonisms is clear to the people, then a just revolution is possible.

But you’re right, it’s success is not guaranteed. I’m a partyist, so I believe in the creation of a political party by the masses to fight on the basis of our own interests against the ruling classes. Through the most democratic means, not common in our workplaces and government, we can collectively reflect and take action on the basis of our collective interests. These interests are ideologically dispersed, but there is a material basis that cuts across all of our experiences, as more or less exploited members of society.

The party is able to accomplish 3 very important functions. 1. It can synthesize and develop a political platform to inform our activity 2. Develop a long term strategy for our activity 3. Actualize immediate tactics that advance our agenda.

I could go on. I will if you want me to. It may seem unsatisfying but I will die defending this, is that our job is not to imagine a more just world and then work our way backward, but to engage here and now in collective political, cultural, material struggle to create the conditions for such a world to exist. Since we can’t know what that is, considering so many contradictions in society are productive (albeit evil) parts of society rather than something that threatens the stability, then we can’t try to prefigure it. That puts the cart before the horse. The answers to your questions are all things you can do right now: join an org that puts you in touch with people who are worse off, become educated on the theory, history and science of liberation, reflect on and criticize every part of everything.

You are already doing this. You are asking burning questions and aren’t quite satisfied with any answers. That, in itself, is an objective revolutionary condition. In my experience, this is what it feels like to begin to uncover actual truth. Don’t stop.

Well also my conception of humanism, which is concrete and grounded in more than optimism, is under elaborated. I think it’s hard to argue that dark triad personality disorders, and the negative expressions of them, are purely inherent traits. Our society seems to breed narcissism within people. Meanwhile there are many people who struggle with these traits and still manage to not do too much damage to other people. Ive known people with clinical diagnosis of psychopathy that were able to manage it with medication and therapy. They still might blow up for seemingly no reason, or be like scarily competitive, but they could also be loving (albeit difficult) husbands and fathers, hold down a good job, be productive.

I think your definition of corruption is interesting, “intentional action outside the intended purpose of a system.” What influences such action? This is what I mean about decentering the human: the system is created by people, workers of all kinds. You are able to conceive of the individual and the system as separate things, but not how the system is made up of the reflective thought and productive activity of people. Your definition can account for abstract objects, but not their histories or the inherent relationships that create and sustain them.

I accept that there is a certain self discipline associated with doing good rather than doing evil. And I accept that we can reach some kind of consensus on what objective good and evil would be. But we have to question why some people develop that discipline and others do not, and the answers are verifiably linked to social and economic factors. I’m someone born with privilege, and my ability to develop myself and act to create positive change is itself a social privilege afforded by things like my race, gender, upbringing, etc.,

Until you are able to account for the fact that the system is made of the productive activity, time, reflective thought, experience, and effort of living breathing people, rather than conceiving of only static objects, you won’t be able to formulate or concretely understand any actual theory of change.

That’s not a dig at you, it’s not an imperfection. Its quite literally how we are taught to think because it underwrites the domination of a minority over the suffering of a majority. We all start out there, but some of us change, because people are capable of change. which means society, made up of people, is capable of change.

In order to change your views beyond a socially imposed limiting perspective, you’ll need to start having new experiences, develop the ability to authentically reflect and criticize them, and through that reflection and criticism, take action to change something in our shared material reality. This reflection in action is what is meant by praxis.

Perfection is an ideal. Idealism can’t change society.

Believing that perfection is the goal for anything is itself a form of corruption. Striving for purity is used to rationalize nearly every form of terrorism and oppression. Nazis strive for purity and call anything outside of it corruption. History shows that they always find some impurity to oppress until nothing is left.

Its not that corruption comes from imperfect humans, but that perfection is misanthropic, anti human. If we built society on centering humanism that would alleviate the corruption. But this is impossible in a society that inflicts the will of a minority over the majority. So the basis for corruption is in fact class domination, and not some inherent human imperfection. Human imperfection is a religious illusion that tricks people to accept the conditions of their own oppression.

What is your definition of corruption?

Is a lack of perfection really the root of corruption? Sounds like puritanism to me

Do you understand the events that led up to the 1917 Russian revolutions, and how they became corrupted? Looking over some of your responses here seems like you want bureaucratic answers, when it was the bureaucracy that corrupted the USSR’s “noble attempt.”

What is your theory of societal change? Or what do you think would not work to change society to become more just?

I can furnish my own theories but would like to hear some of yours. I could also help to explain the what, where, when and how of revolutionary Russia, as it informs some of my own thinking about these problems

“First names dont indicate familial relationsh…” sees kanji in username “…oh never mind, carry on”

human construct

Yeah but also human constructs are objectively real. When people say human construct in a way that relegates it lower than natural phenomenon, that is a condition of alienation. A building is a human construct, so is art, so is a computer, an industry, a society.

Rights are a social construct which are no less real than physically existing constructs. Money is a social construct, so is religion. In fact religion served the same function in feudal society that money does in capitalism.

Since all these things were created by humans, and humans are a part of nature, then human constructs are a part of nature. Rights develop as society develops, as we become more advanced. The right to healthcare didn’t exist before there was widely available doctors, hospitals and clinics to provide it, before modern medicine made it possible to heal many injuries and diseases. But now that the material basis for it exists, like any technology, it can be used to improve the lives of everyone or it can be used to oppress.

But both outcomes are the result of human activity.

I dig your conclusions, but I think that it becomes difficult to convince people when we ourselves are operating on a faulty basis. The reality of human alienation from nature is not an essential part of nature, it is the product of human activity. It took work to create it and it will take work to reverse it. Alienation is a condition of class rule.

But the real basis for it, which in our society is laws and culture underwritten by state violence, is not as permanent as the fact that it is the labor and time of all the workers that create what is actual. And if we want to change the conditions that alienate us from the rights and privileges that our labor creates, then we have to be able to reflect on reality as it is. We have to not just make mystified statements but really understand every step in the process of the logic that we will use to inform the actions needed for liberation.

Taking for granted our alienation as natural and not imposed, is a step in the logical process that informs our subjugation.

inevitable only in hindsight

I’m not so sure. I’m still friends with a guy who told me emphatically “you dont understand what we did, we destroyed the global economy” and then explained the whole subprime mortgage scam to me, back in like 2007. Lots of downstream businesses, new home builders, paint and drywall companies, building materials stores, started folding several months before the official crash as well. I wasn’t nearly as aware of things then, I was a grown adult but not yet 30 and with little formal education, but there were definitely huge flashing signs. Only the media, based 100% on the words of the banks and insurance companies, thought that a crash was undetectable.

I’m not sure quite what it would look like yet, but I’m willing to bet if you look where these data centers are being built, when the cash runs out to keep the whole scam afloat, these big companies will stop paying their bills. The smaller companies providing services and supplies will run out of money before the huge mega corpos start showing signs, so that is one of the metrics I’m watching closely. I just happen to live in the shadow of these data centers so I’ll be pretty close to it, that is if I’m right.

Did you just assume @hitlerball_lover1488’s gender?