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Equals before the law (jlai.lu)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[French writer Anatole France is drawn wearing a flowery tie]
The law,
in its majestic equality,
forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread
-Anatole France

https://thebad.website/comic/equals_before_the_law

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[–] 1 point 5 months ago* (8 children)

Why are you so hostile? I'm being sincere. I'm walking through what you said so that I'm sure I understand. I asked you to say more, and you did, and I just want to confirm I understood it. You don't need to come in so hot.

I didn't mean obtuse like you're intentionally doing that. But I asked you a question and you answered it with another question that described what you were presumably talking about in the negative. Like I have to figure out your meaning by trying to suss out what you dont mean. Thats what I meant by obtuse. If I "got all that" its because I took great care reading and trying to understand your comment. No one else who responded to you bothered to give a damn about your meaning.

You clearly have no clue what my philosophy is. To be clear, I am someone who has read many theory books, and understands them. And yes, I am a Marxist. But I dont think reading books solves the ideology problem you are alluding to.

Reading theory is something that leftists engage in because we want to change ourselves, and we do this by learning to understand facts. There is lots of leftists that just substitute a new ideology, but I try to keep myself honest. There is no author I've read, no org I've joined that I haven't openly criticized, while working to improve the theory or the org.

So when leftists say to "read theory" I think they mean "you should work to improve yourself" which is nice but its a value judgement, it's more idealism. If I'm doing certain kinds of work with people, then yes I need us to be on the same page with our strategies, tactics and definitions. But I dont usually tell people to read theory, I usually just quote/explain the theory in want them to understand. If we can't do that, then imo we dont actually understand it either. More idealism, someone "should" do this or that. Thats not leftism, leftism isnt a social club, it is the struggle.for liberation.

My leftism is essentially practical. I believe that people learn by doing with other people, and when people do new things with new people it changes things in the individual and in the objective world. All the books that I've read, if you really condense Marx into a phrase, that is it. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it".

In my experience a leftist is someone who does the work of liberation, not someone who has read certain books and says certain things a certain way at certain times. When people do the work they often read the theory. Sometimes when people read the theory they do the work, but I'd rather start with the first person than the second. To be honest, I'm much more the second person and its harder to fight idealism with ideas than it is with experiences. So someone who has their mind made up can read theory and it just confirms what we already think. If it doesn't change the way we act, if it doesn't engage us in the work, then the theory is just ego, a waste.

As for 1919 I have no clue what you are referring to.

And for idealism and ideology, these are complicated concepts and I dont think we are on the same page as to their meaning. If you'd like to explain what you mean a little better, rather than just asking pointed questions in a way that does not make clear at all what your beliefs are, that would be helpful. You dont talk like any leftists I've ever met, so its really hard to determine where you are coming from. Can you just name something that you believe other than "liberals bad"? The way you talk about liberals is not qualitatively different from how reactionaries describe liberals.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    You don’t need to come in so hot.

    Fine. I'll quit with the "coming in hot."

    Okay?

    You dont talk like any leftists I’ve ever met, so its really hard to determine where you are coming from.

    That's because my political label is working-class normie - not "socialist" or "anarchist" or whatever.

    And for idealism and ideology, these are complicated concepts and I dont think we are on the same page as to their meaning.

    Ideologies are not complicated things at all. At their core they all come down to a very simple thing - who it is that must be protected by power and who it is that must be exploited by it. Everything else is simply fluff that (at best) play a supportive role. Take the liberal fetishisation of "law & order," for instance - despite this fetishisation it is absolutely not central to liberal ideology at all. It is merely a structural characteristic of liberal ideology -a necessary aspect to facilitate the necessary violence that keeps the working class where liberal elites (the people leftists insist on calling the "bourgeoisie" because... reasons) wants them to be.

    This is what the quote up there refers to.

    As for 1919 I have no clue what you are referring to.

    The Spartacist uprising - you know, that whole thing.

    The way you talk about liberals is not qualitatively different from how reactionaries describe liberals.

    Yes - because that is how leftists should have been talking about liberalism right from the start.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (6 children)

    Thanks for describing some of your ideas. The "liberals" I was referring to are more like other working class normies, not thought leaders. My actual political strategy is to split the liberals, like the petty capitalists will have to be split by developing the conditions of struggle, along a material class basis, not with ideas.

    Im not defending liberalism, I just think a lot of liberals are working class normies who aren't as theoretically developed as you are. I'd say you are anti theory from your comments but that doesn't seem to be the case either. You are contradictory, just like the rest of us, and in contradiction there is the possibility of change.

    I follow your definition of ideology, it's a good working definition. Gramsci's theory of hegemony is worth reading if you haven't. But dont go off YouTube, nobody understands his actual theory. I can send you the essays im referring to, if interested. Only a working class normie, who learned critical thought by criticizing our own experiences could understand it. I'd like to say we have some things in common, I'm no academic and I'm too much of a contrarian to get along with party leaders. Im as self educated a person as youll ever encounter.

    But i think there is advantages to being openly socialist, and I think that condemning theory and theorists is a far cry from being correct, especially when someone commits themself to being oppositional and judgemental at the earliest sign of possible disagreement. Intellectual elitism isnt a quality of the working class, its a quality of the bourgeois liberal. Mirroring elitism with "negative" elitism is playing by the same rules with different referees. But also people have to come to it on their own. You can't convince a liberal to be leftist, something has to change for them, so I think we might agree that there is little use in bending over backwards over them. But I think we can represent a positive alternative, well meaning liberals can be won to socialist principles. But they can also end up disaffected fascists or apolitical bullies. It really takes a party, not an individual; but the party is made of individuals, so there is a dynamic to navigate imo.

    I've read The History of the German Revolution by Pierre Brouè, so I wasn't thinking about the spartatacist uprising like an event, more like a 10 year period, so thanks for clarifying. There are a lot of really great lessons from that time, although unfortunately, many cautionary tales. But one thing that I took from it is the necessity (inevitability?) to split the major moderate factions, like the split between the SPD and the USPD, and later, the KPD and the KAPD, into actual fighting forces for the working class. Unfortunately, it shows how crucial education and deep roots in the working class are to success. Maybe if the Spartacists had done more to prepare for the 1917 split then the working class wouldn't have been so disorganized in the following years. The Vorwards uprising was a result of police agitators taking control of a disorganized movement, Rosa clearly saw the problems with a putsch, and sure enough, the failed action led to the death of her and Liebknecht at the hands of fascist police. If they had survived, the left may have actually seized state power, and Luxemburg's sharp criticisms of Bolshevism may have lead to a dramatically different outcome in Russia as well -- not to mention suppress the rising fascist movement in Germany.

    Two questions, you dont think reactionaries are wrong about liberals? What they hate about it are its progressive qualities, by and large they support private property. You reject private property, do you reject communism? And if so, then what?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    The “liberals” I was referring to are more like other working class normies, not thought leaders.

    If we are going to go forward with this, we will have to agree to draw a sharp distinction between members of the working class whose heads have been filled with liberal propaganda from birth - which, to a higher or lesser degree, essentially includes all of us who grew up in the liberal world - and true liberals who fetishize the "correctness" of their private domination over the means of production (and unspoken but de facto domination over the working class who makes all the production happen) because the key to their power and privilege is enshrined in the core tenet of liberalism itself (that's tenet - singular - because they only really need one).

    Now, you can call these liberal elites capitalists if you wish (and if you really want to creep a working class normie out, you can use the term "bourgeoisie"), but remember... separating the capitalist from his chosen ideology - which is liberalism, not capitalism - has done more to hinder the left than it has helped. In fact, it has allowed liberal media to essentially immunise the working class against anyone who even uses the term "capitalist" in their narratives.

    You can test this for yourself. Ask most working class people what a "liberal" is, and most of them will get it half-right (very few will describe Donald Trump, for instance, as a liberal - though, to be fair, plenty of leftists fails to recognise that as well). Ask them what a "capitalist" is and... well, all bets are off. Most people I talk to thinks it's somebody who works in finance.

    That is how the left has missed the boat on liberalism - by separating the capitalist from liberal ideology, the left has disempowered itself and the wider working class from even recognising liberal political machinations to protect the liberal status quo for what they are.

    It has made the left politically clumsy.

    I’d say you are anti theory from your comments

    Not really. I just think that leftists should perhaps double-check said theory before deciding that it's the working class' fault for not embracing them.

    But i think there is advantages to being openly socialist,

    Perhaps it's because I'm an old... but I just don't feel the need to wear a political "brand" as part of my identity. Besides... I have zero tolerance for purity testing.

    you dont think reactionaries are wrong about liberals?

    I think there is a deap-seated (and thoroughly justified) disaffection with liberal elites amongst the working class - and this disaffection is, with good reason, not just limited to those who can be strictly classified as capitalists. It is the liberal elite themselves which have harnassed this disaffection - at the end of the day, all reactionary politics is designed to protect the status quo.

    The dilemma for the liberal elite is not complicated - manage the working class by tossing more crumbs from the table (so-called "progresive" liberals) or manage the working class through greater repression (whom I call fundamentalist liberals). The carrot or the stick. This is why you see the fundamentalist liberals roiling up those elements of the working class that have already been prepared and empowered to violently repress the wider working class for the protection of the status quo, and this is why you see progressive liberals constantly giving ground to the fundamentlist ones - the lies (ie, the carrot) is becoming less and less effective. The idea that Donald Trump is a fascist is a ludicrous one - the liberal does not do the dirty work of protecting their ill-gotten private property themselves and wouldn't know how to do so if their lives depended on it. They outsource that to the hencherproletariat - actual fascism, which is always a working class phenomenon. There's a good reason why you don't see the rich sending their children off to become cops.

    do you reject communism?

    Yes. The concept is far too esoteric for my liking.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    If we are going to go forward with this, we will have to agree

    Agree completely.

    separating the capitalist from liberal ideology

    I do not believe in separating the two, I dont believe they are separable. Even beyond that, I tend to de-emphasize economics, for better or worse. I dont think that is an imperative for our movements, but a matter of personal style and experience.

    However I think in your analysis you are separating capitalism, the economic base, from liberalism, the ideological superstructure. It reads to me you want to discredit the ideology, which is great, but this isnt possible without affecting the economic base. Unions defeat liberal illusions and create the basis for worker ideology by organizing on economic and verifiable material gains, never has a worker organization been successful by condemning liberalism as its primary strategy in and of itself.

    The reason elites and alienated workers adhere to liberalism is because it validates lived experiences, or personally benefits an individual. So the real difference between the two kinds of liberals is economic, not ideological. Its kind of like there is two liberalisms, liberalism for capitalists is freedom achieved through private ownership, or more acutely, power through mass exploitation. All liberal values of equality, human rights, progress, etc., are secondary to the private property question, I think you'll agree. But to the workers, who benefit materially from peace, unity, solidarity, liberalism is the rights and equality stuff. The dual character hides the private property issue from workers, which is how it subjugates us ideologically. But the basis for the ideology is material, not just ideas.

    I dont really see the difference between being openly cold toward leftist definitions like communist and socialist; and being vocally anti liberal toward workers. If you go down to the protest or the picket line and ask a union member their political alignment, they might tell you they are liberal, or (in the USA) a democrat. But there are many conservative republicans who will also fight for better work conditions. This shows that worker politics are material, not ideal; and that political difference between workers is local rather than universal. But if you tell that liberal union member that liberalism is like a fucked up evil ideology, they won't understand it any more than if you say that they should be communist or socialist. I dont see the distinction except as a matter of perspective.

    In order to teach worker-liberals a theory of change we have to convince them first that change is possible. And to do that there needs to be democratic organization of the masses, effective campaigning for change, and to win changes. Once people experience this, it strikes at the falsity of liberal ideology, but attacking the ideology itself is too abstract, too philosophical, as an approach all on its own. I think it is just as alienating and esoteric as terms like "communist" or "bourgeoisie".

    The most important pieces imo are theory of change, and the organization to carry that change out, verifiably. Capitalism is essentially an organizing of the ruling class against the workers, and workers organized against the ruling class has a distinct character that is worthy of a name.

    However I concede that I often use commie talk when it might not be effective, or directed at the wrong audiences. So I intentionally I find work where people challenge me for it. It can be a pain, but it keeps us honest.

    Also I talk to and work with normie workers all the time and not all of your characterizations are supported by my experiences. Different people of different ages, in different places, at different times can all effect how theyll react to certain messaging. Determinations of what workers will and will not accept must come from evidence and democracy; and the way to determine this is by talking with workers, studying reactions, The last person who told me not to use terms like "socialism" also told me people in her neighborhood lived in $700k+ houses. She couldn't understand that other workers are actually turned off by being too moderate, and want radical change. Both things are true, but this adds complexity to the work. Her observations were grounded in fact, but she wanted to universalize her local conditions, because her experience taught her incorrectly that her experiences were universal. Specificity is essential to concreteness, and concreteness is essential to develop conditions for change.

    I think we make an error if we dont consider the left as workers too. Sectarianism is historic and structural; and capitalism creates socialists. The progressive ideals espoused by liberalism find their practical expression in socialism. Like you said, almost all of us grew up in a liberal milieu, and many socialists start out as progressive liberals. Personally I became a socialist once I realized capitalism could never deliver the progressive values of liberalism, which I believed in as strongly then as I do now.

    I might be over emphasizing parts of your arguments so that it appears to me that your focus on ideology is slightly too idealist to be practical. So please correct my miscalibrations. But I enjoy this conversation and deeply appreciate the great detail you've gone into describing your positions.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    However I think in your analysis you are separating capitalism, the economic base, from liberalism, the ideological superstructure.

    That's not my doing. They have already been separated through ideological means - it's the reason why working class people in the US (for instance) can be convinced that a political establishment that obviously and overtly only represents oligarchic elite interests will, somehow, also end up representing their interests as long as they "vote harder" (or whatever gimmicky party line they come up with next).

    The reason elites and alienated workers adhere to liberalism is because it validates lived experiences,

    You're putting the cart before the horse. Liberal narratives bases itself on the lived experience of the working class - or, to be more accurate, liberal narratives bases itself on the lived experience of those elements of the working class whose support it needs to maintain the status quo - not the other way around. Examples are not hard to find - the "bUt wHeRe wIll tHE mOneY cOmE fRoM?!?" (or it's various variations) gibbering you see liberal economic pundits peddle on tv screens every time somebody proposes building any kind of infrastructure that will benefit the working class is thoroughly based on the mundane, end-of-the-month economic pressures plenty of working class families can identify with. That is why it works so well. In fact, it works so well that it literally becomes self-perpetuating - the working class conflating the economic pressures of working-class economic deprivation with national and even global economics allows the liberal media machine a cornucopia of ways in which to easily justify the machinations of the status quo.

    Faced with this kind of enemy, it shouldn't be that hard for the left to see that leftist ideas of "educating" the working class into radicalism is a stillborn one that is based on romanticised - I would even say magical - thinking... yet it is.

    Perhaps you can already tell by now... my background is in propaganda. And the left gets theirs very, VERY wrong.

    But if you tell that liberal union member that liberalism is like a fucked up evil ideology,

    There's a very big difference between telling somebody that liberalism is a "fucked up evil ideology," and simply exposing liberalism as the fundamentally oligarchic ideology it is, always has been and always will be. The former does not explain why Obama promised "Yes We Can!" and then spent his regime-time bailing out corporations with public money while the working class was kicked further into the economic abyss of (so-called) "austerity" - the latter does. With the latter, there simply aren't too many dots for the average working class person to connect.

    but attacking the ideology itself is too abstract, too philosophical, as an approach all on its own.

    Since when? The reactionaries are literally attacking ideologies all the damn time - even including liberalism itself when most of the people propagating these narratives qualify as private-property loving liberals themselves! It certainly doesn't seem too abstract for them, does it now?

    Are you suggesting right-wingers are "too philosophical?"

    The last person who told me not to use terms like “socialism”

    That's just a purely operational thing. In my experience, any political conversation involves somebody calling me a socialist or a communist five minutes in - my response is usually just, "And what if I am?" and then I carry on regardless.

    and many socialists start out as progressive liberals

    Yeah... and it shows. The "kid glove" treatment liberalism gets from the left shows. And the working class notices it as well. Working class people all over the world loved watching Richard Spencer getting punched by an antifascist - they literally swoon over Luigi Mangione. Yet, despite all this, the working class has as little confidence in the left as ever.

    Why is that?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    So I agree that the left indoctrinating onto left ideas is naive. My major contribution (and fight) lately is that we dont need people to repeat our ideas we need people to think for themselves, critically and scientifically. If people do that, we will become leaders ourselves and the partybwill emerge from the practical work.

    Propaganda in a Leninist sense is essential to the party, and I am a partyist, but asking questions, criticizing my own thinking and others, is what made me a leftist. But in this way, I am skeptical of theory first approaches, probably because I'm so critical of myself.

    It does show that leftists start out progressive libs, but that is a structural fact, not localized wrongheadedness. The ambient idealism of the left is one of our nastiest, most liberal adjacent habits. You'll notice I use the word practical a lot. Attacking the ideology itself as an individual is crank shit. The right is able to attack ideology because of the economic base they already control! This is where your theories just dont match up with Gramsci's formulation of hegemony, which the right understands better than the left.

    Counter - propaganda is worthless without a party or org to carry it out, not just critical words but critical action. In order to convince people of ideas, the circumstances in which people got those ideas has to change. Thats happening now with trump and the feckless Dems, but what it is changing into is decidedly not leftist, and prob won't bring better ideas without strong left organization to win some shit. This is happening in small ways, Mamdani victory, Sanders pres campaign, George Floyd 2020, Palestine encampments, etc., but we are still in the quantitative change phase, we have a lot of work to do and running out of time to do it.

    The right isnt just spreading ideas, they are buying up and getting control of every possible way that ideas spread. They own the platforms. And what do they do with them? Their ideas are wildly unpopular yet they are still winning. It isnt because their ideas are food, its because they are changing the world and making it worse. This is extremely confusing to people who lack a materialist analysis and a clear political direction, and the problem is much deeper than just condemning liberals. I'd rather soften liberal vitriol hoping a few of them dont become repulsed by sectarian leftists; rather than become a sectarian in response to workers repeating the last political ideas that made sense to them, especially when many of them not completely terrible when you remove the private property component. Unfortunately, when we do try and remove the private property piece, the question becomes, well than what will replace it, and we won't know until we build it democratically.

    There's no horse and cart. There is objective reality and subjective reality and the two are intrinsically bound up together. You can use abstractions to suss them out, but that's all they are. Confusing abstractions for reality is exactly the problem we inherit from enlightenment - liberal philosophy that creates all these dumb political consequences for the left. We say, "oh we need to make a party like the Bolsheviks, look how well that worked!" And then never bother to understand that the reason the Bolshies were effective in ways that the SRs and Menshies weren't is because the Bolshies actually went and talked to people, held conferences about their findings, made plans based on their findings, took those plans back to the workers and peasants, made changes -- and then carried out those plans. The moment they stopped that, and let bureaucrats dictate how the world worked, the revolution didn't last 5 good years.

    Sectarianism is structural, it's due to having our movements wiped out and having to start from scratch. Trying to blame people for what is in their brain seems to me an underdeveloped sense of how praxis functions as a object/subject relation. Contextualizing liberalism as a set of ideas and not a structural expression of economic power of the ruling class is, imo, wildly wrong headed. People have bad ideas in a bad structure. Fight the bad structure, make something new, dont be a sucker. Arguing against the ideas created by objective reality isnt putting a cart before a horse, it is the difference between the idea of how a horse and cart works, and how it actually works, having the expertise to do a good job of putting them together, and getting where we actually need to go.

    And if all this makes me come off as sort of a crank, you wouldn't be the only one with that opinion. People are contradictory because conditions are contradictory.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    we dont need people to repeat our ideas we need people to think for themselves

    Great! So what's the very first obstacle we can tackle that prevents people from doing just that?

    The foundations of the dominant ideology we are drenched in from birth, perhaps?

    But never mind that... I think this conversation has reached deadlock. I have pointed out the weakest spot in the enemy's ideological armour - there is no point in me wasting energy and focus arguing with those who has no intention of trying to exploit it.

    Good luck and good bye.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Thanks for helping me sharpen my position against idealism, it will help me in an ongoing debate against others who also wrongly attribute the abstract "changing of ideology" as a viable road to change.

    Good luck to you as well.

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