Mental Illness and White Liberals

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Just taking a stab here.

Modernism would be an appeal to a fair and impartial justice system as facts are presented. Postmodernism asserts that those facts aren't being interpreted by the court.

So Postmodernism wouldn't be at odds with empirical reasoning there, but it's a super speculation on the empirical system itself.

Marxism is a materialist philosophy. Like all materialist philosophies, it's big on rationality, single points of view, objective truth, etc. It's very big on reducing cultures to a summary of material living conditions, and envisioning everything as various forms of class struggle, to the point it'll dismiss ideology as a veneer used by capitalists to distract the proletariat.

The idea of something like Shamanism being taken seriously pisses them off, as you can see from reading the article Goku linked - Shamanism is a non-material way of viewing the world, and is therefore just one more tool that Landlords and Capitalists can use to distract the Proletariat from their living conditions.

The idea of assigning that stuff any weight drives them bananas nuts. It's all tools of oppression designed to distract the working class. All of it. Religion is the opiate of the masses, etc. etc.

Can you tell I find Marxists dreadfully dull? Every fucking time, it circles around to the same damn thing. It's like hearing a verbal record skip.

Yes, it's very trite as far as its representation in social circles.

Marxism stems from the mid 19th century I believe and is more prominent as a sociological assessment since the introduction of industrialized markets in society. As far as I can tell, it's a logical development following demand side economics heavily emphasized and articulated by Adam Smith.

Macroeconomics though became more developed after World War II with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to create national (and thus international) sustainability to avert the rise of the next Nazi party.

Marxists as you describe them tend to be more materialist and don't understand abstract finance markets and the global economy. Like, most people don't really, but they usually prescribe to a partisan leaning represented by people that do understand Keynesian Economics, left or right.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Sorry though that's more just economics, but like the appropriate facets of Marxism, as I see it.

It's used basically as thought experiment starting with yourself and determining a fair justice system based on how you observe the world and the most streamline way to work things from that position.

[GreyICE]

Yes, it's very trite as far as its representation in social circles.

Marxism stems from the mid 19th century I believe and is more prominent as a sociological assessment since the introduction of industrialized markets in society. As far as I can tell, it's a logical development following demand side economics heavily emphasized and articulated by Adam Smith.

Macroeconomics though became more developed after World War II with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to create national (and thus international) sustainability to avert the rise of the next Nazi party.

Marxists as you describe them tend to be more materialist and don't understand abstract finance markets and the global economy. Like, most people don't really, but they usually prescribe to a partisan leaning represented by people that do understand Keynesian Economics, left or right.

Well we should distinguish between Marxism the economic doctrine and Marxism the greater historical philosophy. As an economic doctrine, Marxism believes the following tenants: there are three classes - Workers, Landlords, and Capitalists.

Workers - Are people paid money for the work they do, and pay that money primarily for tools of survival (rent, housing, clothing, etc.)

Capitalists - Those who own capital - distinct, but related to wealth. Capital is the means of production - factories, machinery, farm tractors, anything you use to turn raw materials into goods.

Landlords - Those who own property and other fixed assets that they can charge a fee to use. A landlord is the obvious example, but also electric companies, cell phone companies (nowadays), anyone who can charge you a fixed monthly fee for something you need to live in society.

Marx worked with and extended Adam Smith's analysis. If Capitalists are efficient, they minimize costs - that is they pay their workers the least amount they can. If Landlords are efficient, they maximize profit - they charge workers the most they can. Therefore any wealth generated tends to pool in the hands of Capitalists and Landlords, at the cost of Workers. This analysis is limited in some ways, but is ultimately fairly correct.

Communism was his proposed solution, which IMHO is a bit like solving a roach infestation with a flamethrower, but it's also distinct from Marxist-Leninism, and actually it's kind of questionable if "actual Communism" could even work the way Marx described it, the argument that no one has "really" implemented Communism may be correct in that raw Communism might just not be implementable in the first place. The ideology does tend to morph a lot every time anyone starts to implement it, YMMV there. That could be a whole long discussion.

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Now separate this is Marxist sociological analysis, which IMHO is a lot more dicey. It started out by realigning everything into a class struggle between the Marxist economic classes. Now I'm not saying it wasn't interesting - it's certainly true that historians often overlooked class and inequality issues to focus on the "great men of history" - but it's also fairly limited, and runs into some deep issues when you start to apply it historically. Marxism is an industrial economic philosophy - you need a fairly sophisticated industrial economy to even consider things in those terms. You just can't apply it to 9th century Europe or 5th century China or something. Feudal lords aren't "Landlords" in the Marxist sense, the limited merchant class isn't "Capitalists", and Serfs don't look anything like Workers do in Marx's analysis (free market capitalism also falls apart in those conditions, mind you). Marx is describing a social structure that simply didn't work anything like that in those time periods.

It's a bit like imagining 15th century France as a "nation" or something like that. You try, and then you say something, and it's just sheer fucking nonsense. Now most Marxists did realize this after some cringeworthy early efforts, which is why the entire thing has splintered in various ways. The idea becomes how to apply the materialistic values of Marxism to cultures that were often very, very far from materialistic or industrial. And ultimately, breaking down history and society with that lens is a "when all you have is a hammer..." exercise. It's the "help, help, I'm being repressed" peasant from Monty Python.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'm inclined to think that it really depends. Bernie Sanders has somewhat of a checkered account with the black community, but he seems to reach out to their communities pretty effectively as far as I've seen. Then again Al Capone ran soup kitchens so they say.

Aside from him though, there's not so much of a Marxist social interest group that I've much heard of that has big influence on things. The government itself endorses it with a law here and there, while unions have always been a perceived vanguard to corruption and are typically recognized by the government institutionally.

Alright though yeah, class and inequality. I'm not sure where this approach really breaks down when applying it to a specific part of the world we need to be factoring it into for our political thought.

[GreyICE]

I'm inclined to think that it really depends. Bernie Sanders has somewhat of a checkered account with the black community, but he seems to reach out to their communities pretty effectively as far as I've seen. Then again Al Capone ran soup kitchens so they say.

Aside from him though, there's not so much of a Marxist social interest group that I've much heard of that has big influence on things. The government itself endorses it with a law here and there, while unions have always been a perceived vanguard to corruption and are typically recognized by the government institutionally.

Alright though yeah, class and inequality. I'm not sure where this approach really breaks down when applying it to a specific part of the world we need to be factoring it into for our political thought.

Well as I said, there's Marx's economic theories which are generally seen as valuable contributions, then there's his political theories, which are decidedly less well regarded, then there's using his political theories to examine society and history, which can veer into the downright farcical.

For instance one tendency is to analyze Medieval Europe like it's Marxist. Serfs are Workers and the Nobility is landlords. Yeah, except a key property of labor is that its fungible. Serfs were part of the land. So if 50 serfs died, you didn't put up a notice that said "Hiring serfs! Apply within." So the relationship could be abusive, but it wasn't abusive in the same way. In fact the vast majority of serfs never left their land, so if they hated you they were going to hate you forever, and you were going to live in the middle of them. Not saying the relationship was free of abuse, but it was very different. Village blacksmiths weren't capitalists, they weren't laborers. Traders? They certainly weren't capitalists. They wandered from village to village trading stuff that could be made in a few places for other stuff, and often serving more as storytellers/news reporters than any sort of capitalist/laborer/landlord. There's just no way to fit any of it into the industrial dynamic.


So Marx's ideas have worked their way into economic analysis and social analysis to some degree, but that's different from "Marxist analysis." It's the same way that Newton's ideas are incorporated into Physics, but it doesn't include some "Newtonist analysis" that works in Newton's bizarre brand of Christianity.

Edit: Marxists also tend to veer into this "inevitable progression of history/society/etc." idea that is widely derided This idea that everything is working towards this single fixed endpoint in an inevitable progression. This "progress of history" sort of shit is not well regarded.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'm inclined to think that it really depends. Bernie Sanders has somewhat of a checkered account with the black community, but he seems to reach out to their communities pretty effectively as far as I've seen. Then again Al Capone ran soup kitchens so they say.

Aside from him though, there's not so much of a Marxist social interest group that I've much heard of that has big influence on things. The government itself endorses it with a law here and there, while unions have always been a perceived vanguard to corruption and are typically recognized by the government institutionally.

Alright though yeah, class and inequality. I'm not sure where this approach really breaks down when applying it to a specific part of the world we need to be factoring it into for our political thought.

Well as I said, there's Marx's economic theories which are generally seen as valuable contributions, then there's his political theories, which are decidedly less well regarded, then there's using his political theories to examine society and history, which can veer into the downright farcical.

For instance one tendency is to analyze Medieval Europe like it's Marxist. Serfs are Workers and the Nobility is landlords. Yeah, except a key property of labor is that its fungible. Serfs were part of the land. So if 50 serfs died, you didn't put up a notice that said "Hiring serfs! Apply within." So the relationship could be abusive, but it wasn't abusive in the same way. In fact the vast majority of serfs never left their land, so if they hated you they were going to hate you forever, and you were going to live in the middle of them. Not saying the relationship was free of abuse, but it was very different. Village blacksmiths weren't capitalists, they weren't laborers. Traders? They certainly weren't capitalists. They wandered from village to village trading stuff that could be made in a few places for other stuff, and often serving more as storytellers/news reporters than any sort of capitalist/laborer/landlord. There's just no way to fit any of it into the industrial dynamic.

Right. I'm not sure I've ever seen labor economics applied to non industrial systems. What I don't understand though is how that turns into a problem when applying it to the world we live in. Having a strong regard for regulatory frameworks involving employees and their prospects is very important as far as I can tell. Maybe leaving something for desire in terms of critical race theory, but not really deridable.

So Marx's ideas have worked their way into economic analysis and social analysis to some degree, but that's different from "Marxist analysis." It's the same way that Newton's ideas are incorporated into Physics, but it doesn't include some "Newtonist analysis" that works in Newton's bizarre brand of Christianity.

Edit: Marxists also tend to veer into this "inevitable progression of history/society/etc." idea that is widely derided This idea that everything is working towards this single fixed endpoint in an inevitable progression. This "progress of history" sort of shit is not well regarded.

My point was more that the principles are somewhat genericized, which is not for nothing. His philosophy paid a lot of attention to employees as a social group, which has comparable praxis as is employed by principles of identity politics.

His economics were actually severely flawed, and as I was saying, rather antiquated about a century later following World War II in favor of Keynesian economics.

As far as his propheticism, I wouldn't be surprised if Malcom X read up on a bit of his work.

[GreyICE]

Right. I'm not sure I've ever seen labor economics applied to non industrial systems. What I don't understand though is how that turns into a problem when applying it to the world we live in. Having a strong regard for regulatory frameworks involving employees and their prospects is very important as far as I can tell. Maybe leaving something for desire in terms of critical race theory, but not really deridable.

Eh, I'd say they're fraying at the seams to a level that's hard to really hold to. Marx was looking at skilled labor and trade unions. He never looked at a service economy, venture capitalism, corporate conglomerates, the stock market, and the entire rolling disaster that is the modern financial system. Calling it an expansion of landlords, whatever, it's almost landlords for capitalists. It's just so, so far outside the bounds of the triad.

You can point to aspects that clearly fit Marxism, but even his conceptions of landlords is very telling. I would say the biggest current Landlords, under the Marxist definition, are credit card companies. And they oppress small businesses at the same time they oppress the working class. There's an entire hierarchy of business. I know a guy who owns an electrical firm. Seven people (pre-COVID), he does the most work out of any of them. He's an electrician with 20 years of experience. Is he Worker or Capitalist?

The entire gig economy and contracting just falls outside the strict boundaries of Marxism the same way that serfs and traders did in the medieval period. It requires an entire evolution of Marxist thought and organizing. And if you think they're struggling with that, look at things like this website. This is increasingly a larger and larger section of the market. How does "sfdebris.com" fit into the matrix of Marxism? Worker? Capitalist? Landlord? People are going to pick whichever one's their favorite (usually between workers and capitalists, no one likes landlords). Whether he's an entrepreneur (capitalist) or another oppressed worker who has found an outlet around capitalist oppression... it just kinda falls apart. Neither. It's neither. It's outside his structure.


Marxists will say "well we can keep modifying the structure!" Okay. At what point does the modified thing cease to be Marxism and start being something else? Do we just do Marxist class hierarchy by income level? That's not the way Marx conceived it at all, but maybe?

See what I mean? I have a huge problem fitting Marxist ideology into today's world. In my opinion it's a giant square peg, and it's short on square holes. Things are so much more complex than a simple class struggle. Rural vs. urban, racial issues, age issues, technology issues...

So Marx's ideas have worked their way into economic analysis and social analysis to some degree, but that's different from "Marxist analysis." It's the same way that Newton's ideas are incorporated into Physics, but it doesn't include some "Newtonist analysis" that works in Newton's bizarre brand of Christianity.

Edit: Marxists also tend to veer into this "inevitable progression of history/society/etc." idea that is widely derided This idea that everything is working towards this single fixed endpoint in an inevitable progression. This "progress of history" sort of shit is not well regarded.

My point was more that the principles are somewhat genericized, which is not for nothing. His philosophy paid a lot of attention to employees as a social group, which has comparable praxis as is employed by principles of identity politics.

His economics were actually severely flawed, and as I was saying, rather antiquated about a century later following World War II in favor of Keynesian economics.

As far as his propheticism, I wouldn't be surprised if Malcom X read up on a bit of his work.

I wouldn't say that his economic ideas were flawed so much as they were a step in our understanding. It's like saying Newton's work is flawed. Yes, much of Newton's laws of physics has been supplanted by a much greater understanding (called Einsteinian mechanics) but it's not really like F=ma is wrong. Just a bit too simple.

The Keynesian revolution was to switch from a demand-focused understanding to a supply-focused understanding, while Marx was concerned with a capital-labor dynamic. Those are almost two different things. Yeah, Marx's economics were supply-focused, but that was almost an artifact of the economics of the time. It occasionally sticks out, but it's surprising how much of it is just tangental. For instance, I'll just quote Wikipedia here because it really gives a nice summary:

Marxian economics

Some Marxist economists criticized Keynesian economics.[103] For example, in his 1946 appraisal[104] Paul Sweezy—while admitting that there was much in the General Theory's analysis of effective demand that Marxists could draw on—described Keynes as a prisoner of his neoclassical upbringing. Sweezy argued that Keynes had never been able to view the capitalist system as a totality. He argued that Keynes regarded the class struggle carelessly, and overlooked the class role of the capitalist state, which he treated as a deus ex machina, and some other points. While Michał Kalecki was generally enthusiastic about the Keynesian revolution, he predicted that it would not endure, in his article "Political Aspects of Full Employment". In the article Kalecki predicted that the full employment delivered by Keynesian policy would eventually lead to a more assertive working class and weakening of the social position of business leaders, causing the elite to use their political power to force the displacement of the Keynesian policy even though profits would be higher than under a laissez faire system: The erosion of social prestige and political power would be unacceptable to the elites despite higher profits.[105]

I mean anyone can just cherry pick examples and go "I'm right, I'm right" but the prediction of permanent government deficit spending and an eventual business leader rebellion - trickle down economics - was almost perfectly predicted here. Kalecki predicted a growing middle class would be a social threat to the rich, and lead to a fight against class mobility even at the cost of their total personal wealth (an idea that's almost laughable - what does personal wealth mean to the rich at a certain point? It's just a number. It's about how much bigger the number is than anyone else's number).

So I tend to see more common sense and good ideas from Marxists the closer they stick to economic theory. The more they wander into the less materialistic and vaguer territory of greater social change, the more I tend to find them doing things like shaking sticks and yelling "get off my lawn!" I really don't think it's a coincidence that an "American Libertarian" cited a Marxist when criticizing academia.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

edit: sorry for the non-quoted response btw.

We came back to Keynesian economics though as if we never should have left it. The abandonment of it is more just a result of bad Republican economic policy until Clinton came and did a Star Trek First Contact for us. The Democrats are the only ones with good economic policies, though Ford and Carter were lackluster presidents. Clinton and Obama alone destroy every Republican administration's first class pandering.

Social uprising isn't really an economic thing, it's a sociological one involving oppression. Again, the studies on industrial conditions is very telling because it's a social condition, like that of minorities or sexual orientations, that has a very explicitly mapped out ordeal of systematic exploitation orchestrated on a completely man made and presumably selfly sustainable economic system.

Its influence is pretty much taken for granted, and it's not really a matter of economic science.

What I've seen Marxists do today is gate-keep signifiers of exploitation only for individual circumstances, lest they recognize collective constructs to give credence to the government, which they're not willing to do. That's really all there is for Marxists to talk about, considering the establishment that they don't believe in is something they ultimately have to work at, eg: Bernie working with the Democrats to elicit social democracy.

[GreyICE]

edit: sorry for the non-quoted response btw.

We came back to Keynesian economics though as if we never should have left it. The abandonment of it is more just a result of bad Republican economic policy until Clinton came and did a Star Trek First Contact for us. The Democrats are the only ones with good economic policies, though Ford and Carter were lackluster presidents. Clinton and Obama alone destroy every Republican administration's first class pandering.

Social uprising isn't really an economic thing, it's a sociological one involving oppression. Again, the studies on industrial conditions is very telling because it's a social condition, like that of minorities or sexual orientations, that has a very explicitly mapped out ordeal of systematic exploitation orchestrated on a completely man made and presumably selfly sustainable economic system.

Its influence is pretty much taken for granted, and it's not really a matter of economic science.

What I've seen Marxists do today is gate-keep signifiers of exploitation only for individual circumstances, lest they recognize collective constructs to give credence to the government, which they're not willing to do. That's really all there is for Marxists to talk about, considering the establishment that they don't believe in is something they ultimately have to work at, eg: Bernie working with the Democrats to elicit social democracy.

I'm actually inclined to say that both the Democrats and Republicans have bad economic policies, just the Republicans are quite a great deal worse. As it's been described, Democrats are tax and spend, Republicans are cut tax and spend. While that's simplistic, it also is that there's a lot of similarities in how they spend. Democrats are comfortable with quite a lot of shit that I do not think is good economic policy.

Ultimately the Democrats are a political party, modern political parties (post Citizens United especially) require corporate donors and corporate backing, and the Democrats know the music to the dance. Thus while they'll condemn corporations sometimes, when it comes down to it they don't really mind bailing out GM. They don't mind bailing out auto companies. They don't mind bailing out corporations and protecting bankers and upper management from the consequences of their bad decisions, at a staggering cost to the American taxpayer. We say Keynesian, but this is basic, undeniably crony capitalism. The Republicans are worse might be true, but not admirable.

Bailing out corporations for anything other than a completely unexpected and unpredictable disaster is just bad economic policy. And for the unexpected and unpredictable disaster, that's why insurance exists. If it's really so bad it impacts the entire infrastructure of the United States (say, damaging our entire domestic steel production) then I could buy a bailout, but ultimately these are blank checks written to banks and investors to shield them from risk. They have no effects on jobs for working class Americans.

In addition the Democrats social programs are often staggeringly inefficient, and are sometimes almost as bad as not doing anything at all. Clinton's famous promise to "end welfare as we know it" has resulted in a system that is as awful as it is useless, a staggering inefficiency that accomplishes nothing except human misery. Democrat public housing initiatives are the same. In the great effort to ensure that "no one undeserving gets public money" (except the rich, of course, they get so much of it it's unreal) they often ensure that no one gets anything of value. Then the Republicans label these programs a failure (which, to be fair, they are) and end them rather than trying something that isn't a failure.

Joe Biden, for instance, was behind numerous bank-sponsored bills to make bankrupcy far harder for individuals, enable debtors to hold debt through bankruptcy, and hurt the average American citizen. Despite the fact that banks make money hand over fist, and despite the fact that they're the beneficiaries of vast government bailouts, Biden made a career (and a pile of campaign money) out of expanding bank's ability to harm American citizens. Do you think he's going to do something bad to the banks when he's in office? Hah. No. If they get in trouble again, you bet it's right back to bailout city.

Ultimately the incredibly horrible state of America - crumbling infrastructure, failing educational system, a healthcare system that manages to be the most expensive in the world and one of the worst, declining science production, shrinking middle class, greater wealth concentration, greater income inequality, and an ongoing system of deregulation that replaces important measures that protect people with nothing at all because "our corporations said they'd be fine without this regulation" is a problem that is caused by two sets of incompetents. I mean Democrats controlled the Presidency, House, and Senate for two years, and managed to pass a bill that a little bit addressed one of these.

We can't just blame the Republicans here. It's tempting, but that's ignoring the pile of donkey poop next to the elephant dung.

[CmdrKing]

It's tricky to parse the chicken/egg of it, but I do think partisanship among the Democratic base has exacerbated the problem. There is a huge segment of liberals for whom any criticism of the party or particular candidates is attacked as "supporting Trump", and this goes back further than I can remember really assessing how people respond to politics online. The sort of people who, if you ask why the hell "public option" is a big talking point *now* instead of just part of the ACA like it should have been if you were going to do a bill like the ACA at all, is blaming one or two Blue Dog types or claiming the majority wasn't strong enough to get it past Republicans.

Like, y'all, we can't fix any of this shit or tackle how to do it if we can't have an honest assessment of what's wrong, how we got here, and what elements of the process we have control over. Yes, the Republican party is full fash and should not exist, but we don't control what they do, what can our representatives who *do* represent us be doing better/different!!

But nah, it's all team sports, with us or against us. Fuck helping people, trans folk and immigrants are ~inconvenient~, we have to worry about scaring off the precious Swing Voters who don't even exist in 2020.