Election 2020

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-17-2020, 05:21 PM)Einzige Wrote: This organization emerges organically, in the moment of revolutionary action itself.

The organization emerges always as an elite ruling class that serves itself and oppresses the people.  It always has.  Most people have presumed it always will.  It doesn't matter if it is organic or not.

(11-17-2020, 05:21 PM)Einzige Wrote: An actual socialist revolution precludes this even as a possibility by dint of the fact that it emerges from immediate material conditions.

Why assume that?  You can write whatever you want on paper.  It has never been true in reality.  Give me a theory on what should be done next time to make it different.  I have seen nothing that looks like it might work.

The problem is the same I have over in the General Dynamics thread.  Everyone has a world view and set of values.  How is the world seen?  Towards what should you strive?  I listed a bunch of worldview and value pairs that have been actually relevant towards this crisis:  the KKK, Antifa, the looters, the Boogaloo Bois, Black Lives Matter, the bad cops, the Proud Boys, the Wolverine Watchmen...  I could go on.  If you do not understand all of these pairs, you don't understand the situation.

The Marxists have not been active players.  The folks that are active in this crisis do not have the Marxist world view and values.  Well, the Boogaloo Bois are close.  They do profess to believe that the existing system is broken beyond hope, and that violence is required to fix it, but they shun the propaganda for good reason.

But if you buy into any one of these worldview / values pairs, you often have to disregard certain facts that discredit the pair.  Black Lives Matter is perhaps an exception.  Few doubt that minorities have been oppressed and unequal for a long time.  It is their belief that the racists should become less racist that is the problem, that the political system can make it happen.  In the 1960s enough protest caused the Civil Rights act to be passed, and changed the behavior of the racists.  They anticipate something similar could be done again.  Can it?  Sometimes it is the ideas that don't work outside their environment.  Being of the ghetto mindset, the solutions don't work if you live in a prosperous community.  It is a specialized pair that only works in certain environments.

Do the mindset and values work?  How much do you have to ignore?  How many facts do you have to throw away?  Can you effect the folks whose mind is set otherwise, who are locked into other pairs?  People do not change mind sets and values unless they entirely fail the person totally.  The sort of failure that is adequate is Atlanta in the US Civil War, Berlin and Hiroshima in World War II, or the more recent failure of the Berlin Wall.  You need a real big sledgehammer, and even sledgehammers are not adequate for a few die hards.   People have an incredible ability to ignore facts and cling to their mindsets and values.  I don't care if I am talking about the absolute truth of the Bible, the infallibility of Pope Xenakis, the wisdom of the ghetto way of thinking, or Marxist theory.  If you have to throw away facts, your mindset and values are bad.

In order to adopt the Marxist mindset and values, you have to ignore everything that has happened since Marx.  Pull out your magic eraser.  Disregard what actually happened.  I am told that the theory has never been applied in its true form.  This might be because human nature was misjudged when the theory was developed, so the theory can't be applied in its true form.  You have to change the theory to accurately deal with human nature.  The theoretical people haven't done that.  They just drift their theories further from reality.

Hey, during my working career, I accidentally came to work on projects related to all three legs of the nuclear triad: land based ICBMs, submarine based missiles, and bombers.  You don't think I didn't give a little thought to the civilization I was threatening to destroy?  The triad did it's job.  Still, it is amusing that I read many of the original Marxist texts while relaxing in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the ultimate palace to capitalism, which happened to be located real close to Northeastern.  While the capitalist / communist conflict isn't as hot as it once was, I can revert to the old arguments if I have to.