Evan Jack: Collected Writings, 2018–2020
Preface
I went through indocrination as much as everyone else did. I am not embrassed to publish these as I find them quite interesting, especially my ideological development. I RADICALIZED MYSELF. I was not radicalized by the Bernie campaign nor by social media rather my values deteriorated after certain events I do not want to name, and after those events I took refuge in theory. As 15 year old boy from an trumpie family in the south of the USA, I have no idea how I radicalized myself on my own and so quickly, but nevertheless that is how it turned out.
2018
August
Titled: Politics: a note to the generations ahead
By: Evan Jack
This is a guide, to Politics; I’m sure one of many but I’m not here to shove a personal agenda down your throat, I’m here to tell you what does and does not work in terms, of Politics, and Government. What I say in this “guide” are the facts, if you disagree with me that’s okay; but I encourage everyone to do their own research as Politics and Government are a very slippery topic, there will be some byess as I don’t agree with everything in the world of Politics but I will tell you the core of my beliefs and the core of other political ideologies, so you can learn about all of them and not just mine.
Chapter 1: The Political Spectrum and my thoughts
The Political Spectrums are right and wrong because their main fault is that someone could put no to every answer but someone else could say yes to every answer but both would be defined as centrist even though they have completely opposite beliefs, which ties in to the other main fault every question on a political test results in the same amount of points towards something; for example I could have a question asking Should we prohibit abortion? and you could say yes which would put you 10 points higher towards statism or big government, etc. but you could answer a question asking Should we take away all freedoms economic and social/personal? And you could answer yes but it would just put you 10 points higher towards statism, big government, etc. when the value of that question should instead be 100 points higher for more government control instead of a measly 10 points higher.
Chapter 2: The Politics of Economy and my thoughts
Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, etc. are all different yet only ones the best. Now to answer the question of which “Political Economic System” would work best, I personally would have to say Capitalism, because the leaders of Capitalist countries, don’t kill millions of people like the leaders of Communist and Socialist countries did! For example here are some Communist and Socialist leaders: Hitler (Nazi Germany), Stalin (USSR), and Mao (Communist China); Mao Zedong a truly evil man wanted to help, free, unite, and give power to the lowest of the working class. He showed his appreciation by killing, displacing, and ruining their lives! The Revolutions of the left kill so many people, and they never work, unlike Capitalist and Right leaning economic countries have been proven to work i.e. the U.S.A.
Chapter 3: The Misunderstaning of the Right and my thoughts
2019
April
Titled: N/A (No Title Was Given To This Work)
The school of thought known as Individualism is the best!
How so?
It protects the rights of the Individual from the collective.
Yes, but it allows the Individual to do nothing with their life.
Humanism is not superior in the sense, it argues for a certain life path, regardless of the Individuals wants.
This is true but it argues for humans to advance their learning
The same problem with humanism is prevalent with Secularism
How so?
It argues for a life path not central to religion, even if the individual wants religion to be the center
Yes, but that is so the individual can advance their life towards progress and away from religion
Again this is against the Individual
I do not understand why the Individual is so important
It is important because of Individual Freedom
That still doesn’t answer the question
The Human should be able to make a gain through their own choices.
But these advances should be made through learning, which is why Humanism is superior
Well when we come to the conclusion of freedom Individualism is the best
Well yes I can see that
And from the perspective of someone who enjoys learning humanism is best
We can agree there as well
But I Secularism should only be applied to a government but not Individuals
I can see your point can you further explain
Well a government’s main focus should not be on religion
Okay
It should be on serving as well as furthering the lives of their people
And?
As well as Government Policy
That is an interesting point of view
I agree
What about Humanism
Well Humanism could be interpreted as a form of academic ubermensch
In what way?
Well it advocates for the furthering of a human through academics
Yes, but how does it argue for a pinnacle human
Well after a point the human’s mind will be further expanding through learning
Therefore?
It will start to lead to a “pseudo-ubermensch”
So why is that bad?
Well an Individual should be able to further themselves through any path
I can agree to that
Well this all leads to the fact that Individualism almost encompasses every ideology
How so?
Well it encompasses all non-collective ideologies
Which are?
Well they include collectivism, all forms of communism, all forms of socialism, communitarianism, etc.
How does it include Humanism and Secularism?
Because it allows the individual to choose a path and it includes elements of each
Those elements being?
The element of humanism it includes is the element of self-worth
That is understandable
And Individualism could be described as inherently secular because it takes no position on religion
And I can agree to that as well
Titled: Individualism
Individualism is one of the greatest ideologies ever composed by man. It far surpasses secularism and humanism, due to the fact it focuses exclusively on the Individual. Individualism, unlike Secularism, allows an Individual to choose religion as the center of their life. Individualism allows an Individual to choose any life path they want. This supposed path could be bad or good for the Individual. Individualism, unlike humanism, allows the Individual to choose if they want to advance their learning. The main reason for the supremacy of Individualism, is the protection granted to the Individual from the collective. The Individual is protected from the tyranny of the majority (mob rule), as well as the evils of a collective. Individualism provides more freedom than almost any ideology because it allows the Individual to do what they want as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others.
August
Titled: Welcome
Welcome to Jack-JOLLIES! I will be doing all my JOLLIES for [REDACTED] on this blog. The purpose of this blog is to express my views on the history and subjects I will learn this year. My JOLLIES will be heavily influenced by my politics, and will be completely subjective, though I believe I come from the objective side of politics. My political views can be described as, constitutionalist, ultra-capitalist, as well as extremely patriotic. The intent of this blog is to help others see, understand, and hopefully accept, my unique view of the subjects I learn this year. This blog will be a place of free discussion, and I will answer any questions asked. Stay Free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Is Nationalism bad?
Today, Grand Pooba [REDACTED] showed us [REDACTED] a view on nationalism I already had. The view being, nationalism is good. I have identified as a nationalist in the past, but I no longer know if I could identify as one. The word nationalism carries a lot of weight in today’s modern society. To most nationalism, means fascism or nazism, though it is neither. Nationalism, as I define it, is the advocacy for a pseudo-individualism of nations. The problem with nationalism, is the utilization of it in history, particularly in the 20th century. Most believe, nationalism was used in the past 119 years, to cause two world wars, the death of tens of millions, a rising globalist agenda, and that all nationalist are fascists/nazis. This view is right and wrong, and I will go over both. First, lets go over the view of the two world wars. Nationalism wasn’t used to cause two world wars. It wasn’t used by Hitler and Wilhelm II, to gain the support of the Germanic people. Hitler spoke of expanding German Lebensraum, and Wilhelm II spoke of taking back rightful German “clay”. This idea of expanding the Second and Third German Reichs is what gained the Germanic people’s support, which is imperialism. Both German Reichs practiced imperialism, but the way the central government gained it’s people’s support, wasn’t through nationalism. Hitler gained support differently, because instead of regular nationalism, he preached ethno-nationalism. This is where the delineation begins. We see that it wasn’t nationalism that caused World War 1 or 2, it was ethno-nationalism and imperialism, that was the cause. Which then shows that nationalism didn’t kill tens of millions of people. The ethno-nationalism that was used by the nazis has lead to a rising globalist threat. Globalism is imperialism, globalism’s final goal is to create a one world government. Nationalism is good, it boosts economies, makes countries strong militarily and diplomatically, creates strong borders, and stops globalism (imperialism). Would I identify as a nationalist, no. The reason being, though I would die for my constitution and the founding fathers values, I wouldn’t die for my country. I wouldn’t die for my country, because as I see it my country is dying. It is being killed by the Left, but that’s a JOLLY for another day. Stay Free, Evan Jack.
Titled: What’s up with Absolutism?
Absolutism was discussed and explain in a way I disagree with. Absolutism, when you take away all of the added fluff, can be described as the King equals God. You might say, ‘But the King never says he is God’. Sure, the King in an absolutist nation never says he’s God, but his word is final, absolute, and unquestioned, which sounds like God to me. You might say, ‘But you can revolt against the King’, which is true, but you can also revolt against God. When we look at actual historical examples like the Kim regime in DDRP (North Korea), or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, we see that when you take away education, and full indoctrination, the Absolute Monarch becomes God. The North Korean people believe Kim Jong Un is God, and even when Kim Il Sung died, the people still believed he was a god. Another thing that [REDACTED] disputed was, the King’s subjects were not his slaves nor his property. Which I find to be completely wrong. The subjects of the King must do what he says, or else death. The King exercises his absolute will over his subjects therefore leading me to believe they are his slaves. We can look at the historical example of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. The Pharaohs were believed to be one of the gods, and all of his (or her) subjects were the Pharaoh’s slaves. He (or she) traded them and used them as economic property. So historically, yes, the subjects were slaves, and the King was God. The examples of revolution, only happen when the subjects don’t believe the King is God. Full centralization of the government happens when your God is your Government (state, government sounds better in the line). We can look at fictional examples like George Orwell’s 1984, were when someone attempts to revolt, the state doesn’t even kill the revolutionary, they recondition them to love the state, to love Big Brother. But as long as I live I will not bow to a statist, commie, or an authoritarian government. As always, Stay Free, Evan Jack.
September
Titled: Machiavelli’s Short Comings
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, shows us how to secure and gain political power. The main idea of the book is, do not be hated. Which is true, but you can break a lot of Machiavelli’s rules. Look at the Kim regime, it is the second most controlling regime in modern history (second to the Khmer Rouge). Kim Jong Un and past leaders like Kim Il Sung, were super controlling and abusive to their people. They force millions of people into the military, gave them no power over any of their lives, high taxation, no food which leads to mass starvation, and a fully centralized economy. The people should hate the Kim Regime, but they don’t; Why? The reason why the North Korean people don’t hate the Kim Regime is because of complete indoctrination. The people don’t know how bad their lives are, and they even think life is worse in the United States. But, the Kim regime is nothing compared to the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia during times of mass instability. The Regime was led by Pol Pot, who attended Cambodia’s elite schools and went to Paris, where he was educated in Marxism. Pol Pot’s goal was to achieve an agrarian communist utopia. To do this, he first ordered a forced evacuation from all urban cities, forcing the Cambodian population in the under-developed, rural, rice fields. Second, he killed anyone deemed “educated”, which was subjective to the regime. People with glasses were deemed “educated”, as glasses were seen as a “advanced technology”. Third, he sent Military officials, and elite professionals from the previous regime to “re-education camps”, i.e. execution camps. Fourth, he declared the year zero. Long story short, it was the most abusive and controlling regime in modern history. The reason it goes against Machiavelli more than the Kim Regime, is the people knew of a better life. The people knew of more freedom. The people hated the Khmer Rouge, but the people did not overthrow the regime. The regime was ended when they attacked Vietnam, and Cambodia, being militarily inferior to Vietnam, was defeated. The point I’m trying to make is being hated is not good, but it doesn’t spell the end of your rule. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Absolutism is aboslute trash
Louis was born in a very unstable time for France. His father died when he was five years old, his mother, who was Austrian, was running the French government, and Mazzaran was basically his surrogate father and political mentor. Being born in such an unstable time made Louis very authoritative as he wanted absolute stability. It seems almost like the perfect conditions for the rise of absolutism in France. Though, Louis did make France a great European power, and reigned longer than any European monarch in history, absolutism is absolute trash. Absolutism led to huge wealth inequality, and lots of government coercion. Now the problem with lots of government coercion is: 1. It leads to an unfree society 2. It leads to mass death (I’ll give examples) 3. It leads to mass wealth inequality 4. It leads to a mass and involuntary proliferation of the military 5. It leads to very low innovation in all areas of civilian life 6. It leads to a lot of atrocities. I could continue to go on, but instead I will further explain these 6. For the first point, it is common sense that government power leads to an unfree society. For the second point, examples include: The Great Leap Forward, The Great Purge, mass seizures of civilians in the Khmer Rouge, The Holocuast, and countless others. For the third point, USSR, PRC, DPRK, KR, NSDAP, KOI (NFP), and countless others. For the fourth point, every time government power increases, so does the military. Now the problem is not the growth of the military, but the involuntary growth of it. For the fifth point, in the USSR, the PRC, and every communist country, mass poverty was present. For the sixth point, look to point two, as well as philosophical atrocities, i.e. cultural revolutions. These are just some of the few ways government coercion and absolutism is bad. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Theocracy is unholy trash
17th Century England is the beginning of the end for the dominance of the governance known as monarchy. It is the start of the end of monarchy’s power not just over England but as the global hegemon of Ideologies. The events that transpired led to the creation of my beliefs, but that is for another jolly. What I’m going to refute today, is the stupidity of theocracy and the combination of religion and state. Now you may ask, how theocracy even relates to 17th century England. Well, the answer is the Dictatorship of Cromwell and the denomination of Christianity known as puritanism. So what’s wrong with theocracy? Well, 1. Theocracy breaks simple religious freedoms. By having all people under your rule follow one religion, it marginalises groups of people that could contribute to the economy, and create new innovation. Examples of this include: Every atheist communist state ever i.e. especially Cuba; Nazi Germany, which this example is ironic, because they forced a mass jewish exodus of Germania, and people like Albert Einstien and other jewsish scientists contributed to the war effort as well as nuclear development in the United States. 2. Theocracy leads to mass atrocities. Just like almost every other ideology I refute, one of my points will most likely be mass atrocities. Theocracy leads to mass atrocities, examples of this include: The Crusades, Ottoman exapansion (which lead to lots of death, rape, pillaging, scorched earth typed tactics i.e. burn the village and salt the grounds), The Holocuast, and lots of others. This is just one of the main problems with the combination of church and state, as it just leads to religious tension and leads to internal government instability. A secular society as well as government is preferable. 3. Theocracy is just an inferior form of government as well as political ideology. Theocracy is just bad, it violates religious freedoms, leads to death, decreases economic growth as well as innovation. Theocracy is just unholy trash. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: The problems with the British Monarchy in Modern English Society
Parliament is the genesis of liberal democracy, and without English Parliament, I doubt the United States, as it is today, would take form. But English Parliament, as it was in the 17th Century, is trash. Parliament too easily bent to the King’s authority and even restored the English Monarchy (Crown). The parliament failed in my eyes, because it kept a king. Though, it is a constitutional monarchy, and the British Crown has above zero political power, it still needs to cease. By England keeping the monarchy intact in the modern era, it allows for a small but still present chance for restoration. As nationalism increases inside the EU, the possibility for authoritarian groups to rekindle the flame of the monarchy. Sure, this is unlikely, but still possible. The institutions of the monarchy are still seen in English culture. After all, the English call July 4th, Treason day. Other problems with allowing the Monarchy to still be intact are: 1. It allows for people to be born into lavish wealth, but not in a good way. If the wealth of the English Crown was given back to the people, it would allow for tax breaks, as well as an increase in quality of life. Now, you many start calling me a communist for wanting to take the wealth from the monarchy and give it to the people, but I’m not advocating for wealth being taken away from people who have earned it i.e. workers, but instead taking wealth away from an institution that has oppressed and taxed the people of England for centuries. 2. The Royal Family actually steals from the British people. How, you may ask? Well the Royal family is tax exempt, as well as taxes go to the Royal Family to fund them. The only argument for the British Monarchy is tourism, but the building as well as historical site can still be used for tourism, because the Queen herself does not meet citizens. The idea of having a monarchy in present day society is just abhorrent. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: In Defense of Capitalism
This political and economic ideology is the greatest thing to come out of the Enlightenment. Capitalism is the best economic theory ever conceived. Capitalism is what I’m going to be advocating for in today’s jolly. So, why is Capitalism good? Well, here are the main points: 1. Capitalism leads to major economic innovation. The United States is the largest innovator of all time. The World had its most technological innovation during the 1800s-2000s, i.e when capitalism was implemented. Innovation allows for, an increase in the quality of life, kills diseases, makes connectivity and human interaction easier, and countless more benefits. 2. Capitalism allows for people to climb the wealth ladder, through equal economic opportunity. A great example is my father who was born to a rural alabama family. My grandfather died when my dad was 12. My grandmother, now a single mother, was a teacher. They lived below the poverty line, but my dad climbed the wealth ladder and know lives in [REDACTED]. 3. Capitalism solves poverty. Look at example 2. But the reason this is good is, because it allows for a better economy, which does countless things for the people of a nation. It also allows for better lives for the impoverished 4. Capitalism allows for a countries economy to boom. Examples include: Estonia, China, United States, Switzerland, and so many more. 5. Capitalism allows for the preservation of the economic individual. I will explain why this is good in my next and final jolly before the reaping. 6. Capitalism allows for private property. The reason private property is good, is because it allows for citizens to check the government. It also allows for citizens to secure themselves. If you have any refutations, put them in the comments below. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: An Advocacy of Individualism
Without Individualism the advent of the modern man would not take place. Individualism is what led to some of the greatest historical events. Those being: The American Revolution, the creation of the U.S. Constitution, the creation of Capitalism, the war against collectivism (1900s-Present Day), and countless others. The main thing individualism has led to, is the creation of the United States of America. Individualism was the lifeblood of the American Revolutionaries. Individualism and “lofty” ideas of freedom, is what the Founding Fathers dreamt of in a nation. So why is Individualism so good? Well, I’ll give a few reasons. 1. Individualism is what stops collectivism. I’ll provide further explanation. Collectivism is the root of all that is bad in politics. Collectivism is a part of Communism, Nazism, Imperialism, Globalism, Mob Rule, Fascism, Feudalism, Theocracy, Socialism, Democracy, and just so many more trash ideologies. Collectivism allows for the rights of the individual to be taken and thrown into the trash. This is why the Founding Fathers hated Democracy. They knew democracy would lead to mob rule, were the rights and beliefs of the minority are killed. Collectivist policies are most likely going to be ends justify the means, which leads to atrocities. Examples include: The Holocaust, every Communist Regime ever, WW1, WW2. 2. Individualism is what created the base for capitalism. If you want reasons why Capitalism is good, look at my previous jolly. Individualism created the incentive to protect the economic rights of the individual, i.e. property rights, free trade, etc. 3. Individualism allows for the individual to do as they please, without infringing on the rights of others. The primary benefit of this point is the expansion of freedoms. There is no down side to this point. 4. Individualism allows for consciousness. The collective doesn’t allow for consciousness, creates an echo chamber, a state of unconsciousness. Without the presence of individual thought, all beings aren’t thinking. And when further looking into a state of individual consciousness, we can fall down the rabbit hole. At the end of this rabbit hole are ideologies like egoism, and solipsism. The latter says, only an individual can be conscious and know of their consciousness. The former says, the foundation of morality is the self-interest of the individualism. Those are just two forms of extreme individualism, which may be a subject of a future jolly. As always stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: America the Place I Want to Be!
If I could live anywhere in the world at any time, I would choose to stay where I am. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is the availability and access to medical care. America arguably has the best health care. Even though in American health care costs money, there are fewer wait times, more skilled doctors, and it is more available. The second reason is the advancement of technology. In 2019, we have the best technology the human race has ever had access to. America, specifically, has the most technological advancement and innovation. In my lifetime alone, the technological innovation we have seen is astounding. The third reason is political liberty. America is the most politically liberal, out of any country. No other country has freedom of speech protected, nor gun rights protected. The fourth reason is economic liberty. As the rest of the world moves left economically, America moves right. America has always had capitalism intertwined with its people and culture. Colonial and early America was the birthplace of capitalism and liberalization of markets. Only in America can I have this level of economic liberty. In conclusion, I would stay where I am, as only now can I have such a good life.
October
Titled: Violence in the Modern Political Landscape
[REDACTED] showed us a PragerU video. The video talked a lot about intolerance on the left, and how the right is tolerant. When further analyzing the intolerance on the left there is something new.
The Left: New Violence.
This new thing is the willingness for violence. The left have broken and escaped the chains of the “hippie movement”. The “hippie movement” kept the radical left at bay, and without this idea of global pacifism the left will and have been getting more violent. Punching nazis in the face is one example of the increasing acceptance of violence. Though, threats of violence aren’t as bad as carrying violence out. The problem is the violence is carried through. Antifa is a huge example of this. The post-left and the anarcho-collectivists (Anarchist Left) have subverted to the mob. The post-left have a particular tactic that is used en mase. This tactic is masking violence with liberation and virtue ethics. Black Lives Matter uses black liberation, anti-blackness, afro-pessimism, etc. to justify violence. Antifa uses class struggles, and the oppression of the proletariat, to justify violence. Animal Liberation movements raid farms, steal animals, and they do this in the name of animal oppression. The Left is becoming increasingly more violent and oppressive, all in the name of overthrowing oppression. But are the Left the exclusive side of violence.
The Right: Old Violence.
The Right is made up of two sides, the authoritarian right, and the libertarian Right. The liberatarian right doesn’t perpetrate violence, but the authoritarian right does. Examples of the authoritarian right include, the proud boys, ethno-nationalists, NSA, and many other self identifying right wing groups. These right wing groups have not created “new violence”, but instead advocate for “old violence” (racism, sexism, etc.). The authoritarian right wing groups have become less and less violent.
Are the right wing less violent?
The answer is yes. The Liberatarian right are an entire half of right wing politics and haven’t been violent. The left, both authoritarian and liberatarian, have been violent. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: The Joke of the Modern Political Landscape: Feminism
Feminism is a highly polarized subject. The question asked and answer in this jolly is: is feminism necessary in present day? But first, we need to look at the 4 waves of feminism.
1st Wave Feminism
People like Wollsonstonecraft advocated for gender equality at a time women actually weren’t equal to men. The women who advocated for the right to vote were 1st wave feminists. To answer the question: was 1st wave feminism necessary? The answer is yes.
2nd Wave Feminism
2nd Wave Feminism was a movement in the 1960s to achieve equal pay, and other social benefits. In 1963 they passed the equal pay act of 1963. The equal pay act made it illegal to pay someone less based on sex. They ended discrimination in the workplace, as well as legal sexism. To answer the question, 2nd wave feminism was necessary.
3rd Wave Feminism
3rd wave feminism began in the early 1990s. Goals were to achieve sexual liberation, reclaiming slurs, gain reproductive rights (abortion), etc. The 3rd wave of feminism was more social change than legal change. The problem with 3rd wave feminism is women were already equal to men in the 1990s and early 2000s. Men had no legal advantage to women. 3rd wave feminism was not necessary.
4th Wave Feminism
4th wave feminism began in 2013. The goal was empowerment of women, and stopping “oppression”. These feminists “fought” for equal pay, which they already had. They fought against the “patriarchy”. 4th wave feminism is an absolute joke, truly aimed at disadvantaging men. 4th wave feminism was not necessary, in fact, it hurt much more than it helped (not that it did).
Is Feminism Needed Today?
Feminism isn’t needed today. In the US women have full equality in the United States. 4th wave feminism hurt the idea of feminism, any more feminist movements will just cause regressive policies. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Free Speech and Free Society
An area of so much political debate today, free speech. Now what is free speech; well it’s in the name, freedom to speak anything you want.
The Big Question: Is Free Speech Good?
Well, first we need to see why it would be necessary. Free speech is necessary for a few reasons.
Reason 1: Society
Free speech is inherently needed to foster a growing society. Without free speech, a society can’t express itself, it is a culture of fear, and pessimism. Examples of the latter include: Stalin’s USSR (after the Great Purge), North Korea, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, Hitler’s Germany, and so many more dictatorships. A society with free speech, can grow and foster a culture of growth, socially and economically.
Reason 2: Legitimizing Totalitarianism
Yes, you read correctly, legitimizing totalitarianism. When we go back to reason 1 and look at my examples, we can see one thing: they are all totalitarian regimes. The idea of regulating speech, political correctness, is a form of cultural and political totalitarianism. Political correctness, will eventually destroy everything, our culture and freedom, if allowed to grow.
Reason 3: Irony
This isn’t so much a reason but a fault of the far/post-left. When we look at these far/post-left groups like anti-fa[cist], we can see their anti hate speech approach (which is ironic). These anti-fascists are the ones wanting to regulate speech.
Reason 4: Murica’
Free Speech is constitutionally protected in the United States. So, it’s not leaving us anytime soon.
The Answer
Yes, free speech is necessary. It is KEY to creating a free and flourishing culture and society. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Kant, Objectivally Garbage
So one of the more undercovered/misconstrued philosophers we talked about is Immanuel Kant, and we are going to talk about him in this jolly.
Kant: The Racist and Sexist
Kant was just plain racist, he distinguished four races: White, Yellow (Indian), Negro, and Red (Indian). Now that’s not the problem, though that can easily be interpreted as racist, the red flags lay somewhere else. The racism lies in the order above. That was actually not only a distinction of races but also a ranking (best to worst). He even says that human progress is to solely come from the white race. His racist ideas are just awful and repugnant. Now Kant also believed women were inferior to men. He believed women were not suited to be treated as full adults in public. He believed they had an inferior intellectual ability to men and an inferior temperament. Kant was just trash, but some give him a pass because of the culture back then. Though, I do not.
Kant: Ideas of Morality
Kant’s ideas of morality were way to “objective” and strict. He believed it was wrong to lie to a would be murder, so the would be victim doesn’t die, i.e. it is wrong to tell a S.S. officer that you aren’t hiding Jews in your house when you are. He also believed morality was objective, through a categorical imperative. His ethics are just deontological based trash. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Further Reading: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/98032168.pdf
Titled: The Social Contract, Something I Didn’t Agree To
So in today’s jolly, I’m going to talk about the social contract.
Part 1: The Falsehood of the Social Contract
The social contract isn’t real, it is just an idea made to explain how the state was made. It isn’t real nor legitimate, as people disobey it all the time, by breaking laws and even revolutions. The Social Contract believes that people have natural rights (i.e. rights that can’t be taken away by the sovereign), but that you can trade them for protection.
Part 2: The Tool of Power Justification
The Social Contract is also just a tool used by the state to justify its power. I never consented to this social contract; I never agreed to state domination; I never allowed the government to dictate my movement through borders and laws. These are just too many problems with the social contract theory. It justifies state violence in the name of “protecting rights”. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: The Natural State of Man: A False Assumption
The Natural State of Man is what philosophers believe man is with no laws, restrictions, morality, etc., and it is fine to theorize about what it could be, but not to state what it is. The problem is we don’t know what it is, nor if there is a strict version of it. There are usually two ideas of the natural state: peaceful, or scorched earth everyone is a psychotic. For the latter, people cite the Lord of the Files, which is laughable, as it is a work of fiction. For the former, people just theorize. Neither is grounded in facts. I find it funny that the reason Hobbes believed that people were inherently violent without a state, is because of the English civil war. The civil war happened because of the state. As there has never been a true anarchist society. Also Hobbes advocated for absolute monarchy, and therefore his ideas of the natural state of man (anarchism) are not objective. For further reading, just read some Kropotkin. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: An Advocation for Free Thought and Writing
So when looking at my jollies, I see two things that are missing. 1. Passion and Interest, and 2. Depth. The reason for this I believe is my mentality of boredom with pre-1800s history and the other reason is subjects that aren’t on my mind. Having the checklist for jollies kinda freaked me out. As on my first reaping, I did very well, but I had a XXX in the Misc. section. Though [REDACTED], I don’t think you counted off points for that. I do not like the fact that jollies have to be “course relevant” as [REDACTED] put it in the JOLLIES sheet (the one we got at the beginning of the year). I want my jollies, not to be a place of course relevant topics, but rather Evan relevant topics. By Evan relevant topics I do not mean petty stuff that I’m going through, I mean stuff I’m interested in and will write about passionately and thoroughly. I think if I can write about subjects I truly enjoy, the jollies will be amazing! I already have a plan of action. I’ve finished 5 very in-depth jollies on Striner’s egoism, Epicurus’ theories of the fear of death, Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of micro fascism and rejection of Freud’s psychoanalysis in favor of schizoanalysis, Schopenhauer’s ideas of suffering and desire, and lastly Nietzsche’s Nihilism! I want to write about philosophy, postmodernism, politics, ways of life, economics, but if I’m regulated to what the curriculum wants my jollies will never truly flourish. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have to do a required amount of jollies or do them in a certain way. I’m instead saying we should do that, but we should be able to write about what we like postmodernism, philosophy, etc., and as long as it is reasonable i.e. not about random things like I went to the zoo, or I brushed my teeth this morning, etc. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: War and Peace
The idea of having peace with violence is a very weird idea. This idea of having a state of no war or conflict but still having violence isn’t a wrong idea at all, and here’s why. We can look at this in two ways: 1. No violence at all, or 2. No war.
Part 1: No Violence
If having no violence whatsoever as the prequiste to peace, then there is never peace. It is impossible! Violence is always occuring, physcological, emotional, governmental, physical, etc. You can’t cure the ills of the world. You can’t cure the suffering of man (little Nietzsche refernce for you). So the answer to this is no, there cannot be peace with violence.
Part 2: No War
If having no war is the prequiste to peace, then yes you can have peace with violence. We have a perpetual state of peace in the US; there have not been any civil wars, revolutions for a while. So in the US there is peace, but there is still systematic violence, murder, rape, etc. that takes place in the US.
These are just my thoughts! As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Extremists Coming Together? Don’t Count On It!
Is there a best way to solve problems between opposing viewpoints? No. There isn’t even a way to solve them at all! What I mean by this is if someone compromises on their viewpoints, these new viewpoints aren’t the same as the old. Here is a better way to visualize this. As I am a laissez faire capitalist, I would never ever ever compromise with a communist! Why? Because our viewpoints oppose each other to the maximum! What spawns from this is this horendous thing known as centrism or political apathy. Either you have to change your viewpoints to please others, or you have to have none. This is just bad and wrong! Compromising with a side, which to you is wrong, makes no sense. What are you achieving, besides the loss of your wants, allowing the other side to flourish. This idea of compromise isn’t always a good thing. As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: A Good Nieghbor: A Flawed Idea
The question asked by the WORLD PEACE GAME: FINAL REFLECTIONS, “Describe in as many ways as you can, how a country can be a “best neighbor” to other nations”, is just flawed. The idea of being a good neighbor to othe nations is flawed in the sense that the language and framing of the question, implies that other nation’s wants should go before your own. Honestly when thinking about your nation, you have to think about your people first, not some other country. This is just how government should operate. When I say for the people, I do not mean support the general will, as there are many critques of the general will. Rather my meaning is the people should not be harmed but rather benefitted, when making deals with other nations.
Part 1: Not Nationalism
What I’m advocating for is not nationalism. I’m not saying put your nation as a state first; I’m saying put your people first over everything else, this is key to good governence. Whatever method you can do this with is fine.
Part 2: Not Imperialism
What I’m advocating for is not imperialism either. Imperialism does not benefit your people, it benefits the state. The difference is the people are not benefitted as your nation expands stability will most likely decrease (Ex: Rome, Russian Empire, Soviet Russia (USSR), and many others), costs increase, and taxes to maintain stability increase (which people don’t like).
Part 3: Good Governance
What I am advocating for is good governance. Putting your people first in looking at consequences of policy making and implementation is key to good governance. It is a psuedo form of nation-based utilitarianism and rule based (the rule being benefiting your people) consequentalism.
As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: Was the French Revolution the Most Important Step for Mankind?
The French Revolution was the most important step for mankind since the advent of Jesus Christ — Victor Hugo.
First, the framing of this jolly. I will be looking at all of human history for the answer. I understand that Victor Hugo wasn’t alive for the 20th nor the 21st century, so I’m not critiquing him. Now to the answer.
Let’s first look at some canidates. The invasion of Poland, by Nazi Germany in 1939 (start of WW2). Maybe the Treaty of Versailles. The collapse of the Roman Empire. The American Revolution or maybe the Russian Revolution. The development, launch, and detonation of the first nuclear bomb, The Atomic bomb (launched by the United States). The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdedand, which arguably led to WW1. The collapse of the USSR (end of the Cold War). George Washington stepping down to allow for another president, and staying true to the Founding Father’s ideals. Maybe the creation of the IPhone, or the first computer.
Now lets single some of them out. The start of WW2, is more important than the start of WW1. The end of the Cold War is more important than the Atomic bomb, as more power weapons i.e. the Tsar Bomba was developed and tested (detonated) by the USSR. I think these are the most important events out of the bunch. So lets analyze why.
Part 1: WW2 Electric Boogaloo
The advent of WW2, the greatest (actual) war in human history has begun. Panzers traverse the Polish country side. Hitler has begun the undoing of the humliation caused by Versailles. Using the new military tactic Blitzkriege, they easily defeat the Polish (with the help of the Soviets). Now that we have seen the “first steps” of the second World War; we can look toward the causes. Contrary to popular belief, the economic $%&*-storm that came to Germant due to the treaty of Versailles, was not the cause of WW2, rather it was imperialism. Hitler was obssed with taking back “rightful German clay”, i.e. the land taken from the second German Reich (German Emprie) in the after math of the first world war. The only thing that the hyper-inflation did was allow for Hitler to gain support for the Holocaust, as he blammed it on the Jewish Bourgoiese.
So why was WW2 so important? Well, after “testing” out weapons in WW1; the military innovation that came during the Inter-War Period; is what allowed for the Second World War to be the ultimate lybrinth of death. 65+ million deaths, deaths on every front. Operation 227 called by Priemer of the USSR, Josef Stalin, literally called for the shooting of Soviet soliders that were trying to surrender or desert. The Japanese prince, embarassed because of the four month long campaign aganist Shang-Hai, allowed for the Rape (literal) of Nanking. More than 1,000 women were raped then subsequentaly killed, every night for about 30 days, until the Rape of Nanking was finished. The Holocaust, extermination of slavs, gays, people that were considered inferior by ableists, etc. It led to the dentenation of the Atomic bomb. It also led to the rise of the United States and the U.S.S.R. as global superpowers, which nicely leds to our second contender.
Part 2: The Cold War
The Cold War was unlike every other conflict before or after it. The could be impacts of the Cold War, were infintely worse than any other conflict’s impacts. The could be impacts were total nuclear annihilation or Soviet global hegemony. So much happened in the Cold war! The Bay of Pigs, which could have led to total nuclear annihilation. The Vietnam war, which lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The Korean war, which hasn’t techinically ended. The bombing of the Khmer Rouge, which was an effort to destory the oppresive regime. Development of the Tsar Bomba and other nuclear weapons, which could have easily led to a nuclear war (assuming one was fired). The arms race, which led to the latter. The space race, where the US, but really just mankind, reached and walked on the freaking moon! No other conflict entailed such magnitude, moments of glory and awe. The impacts of the French Revolution are so miniscule compared to the impacts of the Cold War. The benefits of the Cold War are huge as well! The US became the global hegemon, millions were alliviated from poverty through globalization, we got to the freaking moon! So in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, arugably the greatest event in human history ended. This is why I believe the Collapse of the USSR or the end of the Cold war, is the greatest event in human history.
As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution
Here is a comment I made:
“No, the French Revolution wasn’t even a cause of the Russian Revolution. To say it is, would be a misrepresentation of history. 1. The Russian Revolution happened because of class struggles, and wage slaves. 2. The Russian Revolution happened because of capitalism, which was developed by Adam Smith (in America). The American Revolution wasn’t affected by the French Revolution. 3. Marxism wasn’t influenced by the French Revolution, rather it was influenced by the Industrial Revolution, which happened in England and America. The English even talked about how the French Revolution was too violent. 4. Lenin wasn’t really exposed to the ideas of the French Revolution until maybe he was exiled to the German Empire, but even then he was already a radical vanguardist revolutionary (which is why he was exiled). 5. The conditions of workers got worse after serfdom was abolished in 1861. The French Revolutions’ purpose was to abolish Serfdom. 6. The spread of “communism” around the world happened because of the internationals and Stalin’s rise to power. 7. Number six is what lead to the Cold war. 8. America’s rise was also a cause of the cold war” (Evan Jack).
This comment made me do more research, and deepen my knowledge on pre-revolution (Russian) socialist thought.
So in my last jolly (it was the large comment in my last jolly, and it was so large it should count as a jolly), I talked about how the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution really didn’t have anything to do with each other. I think that the similarities of how they approached things were sort of similar, like the storming of buildings (Winter Palace, Versailles, Bastille, etc.), but they don’t mean they influenced each other. So I’m going to expand on this.
Part 1: The Jacobins, bad and bougie
So the Jacobins were the bourgeoise. They replaced the mid to upper-class aristocracy. This was a critique of the French Revolution Marx had. The Jacobin Party also wasn’t a very left-leaning party either.
Part 2: Babeuf and the Revolution that Never Happened
In reality, the French Revolution actually lowered the chances of the Russian Revolution, and here is why. The Directory (the French Government at the time) executed Francois-Noel Babeuf. Babeuf called for the abolition of private property in favor of peasant owned property, he also called for a revolution of the peasants. In this light, Babeuf could be described as the ideological precursor to Marx. The idea that the French Revolution is what pushed him to come up with Babouvism is just wrong. On the 21st of March 1787, he wrote a letter to the secretary of the Academy of Arras. This letter really showcased his future ideas of socialism. So this idea that Babeuf’s Babouvism wouldn’t have been thought of without the French Revolution is false. Rather in an alternative world where the French Revolution didn’t happen, Babouvism would have even more prominence; I’ll explain further. If the already horrible working conditions of the serfs (France’s proletariat) got worse, as the revolution never happened, Babeuf’s ideas would have had even more prominence and could have led to a peasant uprising.
Part 3: Saint-Simon
Henri de Saint-Simon was born in 1760 and died in 1825. Saint-Simon came up with the idea of industrialism, which advocated for a society led by the industrial working class i.e. the proletariat. So the idea of a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was a thing before Marx. Information on him doesn’t reference the French Revolution and its influence on him.
Part 4: Morelly
Étienne-Gabriel Morelly was a French Utopian Socialist, who was born and died before the French Revolution. He came up with the idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” about 34 years before the French Revolution in 1755.
Part 5: Fourier
Charles Fourier was a French socialist thinker. His ideas were due to the industrial revolution. That really it.
Part 6: Marx
So Marx is the person really behind the Russian Revolution. He led to Lenin, Trotsky, etc. etc. So what did he base his views on?
Part 7: The Industrial Revolution
A consistent pattern between all of these commies is they were upset with how the proletariat was treated by the bourgeoise (or how serfs were treated by their masters). The Industrial Revolution was really the cause of Marxist thought. So what caused the Industrial Revolution?
Part 8: Causes of the Industrial Revolution
Not the French Revolution! It was the British that first industrialized. So now we can see the cause of Marxist thought was the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution wasn’t caused by the French Revolution. So the next question is without the tactics developed in the French Revolution would the Russian Revolution have been successful?
Part 9: Would the Russian Revolution Have Been Successful Without the French Revolution?
So the main idea that Lenin took from the French Revolution was the Great Terror. He replaced great with red and started the Red Terror. So did the Bolshevik’s need the Red Terror to win the Russian Civil War.
Part 10: The Red Terror
So was the Red Terror key to Bolshevik victory? No, which I’ll explain in part 10, but even if it was it wouldn’t matter. So I’m going to look at what inspired the Great Terror. It was Ivan the Terrible and his secret police. So even without the Great Terror, there is still a “blueprint” for consolidating new states.
Part 11: Was the Red Terror Needed for Bolshevik Victory?
No, it really wasn’t. Here are some reasons why.
Reason A: Red Strength
The Red Army was composed of 5,427,273 soldiers at its peak, while the White Army was made up of only 2,400,000 soldiers at its peak. So already the Red Army is winning in numbers.
Reason B: Red Morale
The Red Army had high morale, they (The Red Army’s soldiers and Proletariat) were fighting against their oppressors (The White Army, Tsar, and the Bourgeoise). It was a revolution! The Red Army’s soldiers and the citizens, who supported the Bolsheviks, had ideas of throwing off their shackles, utopia, etc. The White Army had horrible morale. They (The White Army’s soldiers) had already lost (they just called for peace with the German Empire but they basically lost) the Great War (WWI). The weather was atrocious, they had horrible attrition, nothing to really fight for, etc. So the Red Army is winning in Morale.
Reason C: Military Leadership
Most of the Red Army’s military officers were ex-Tsarist military officers (By the end of the Russian Civil War, 83% of the Red Army was made up of ex-Tsarist officers and soldiers). So the White Army had a severe lack of military organization and military leadership. So this helped the Red Army and hurt the White Army.
Reason D: Loss of Land
So many states declared their independence from the Russian Empire. Examples of states the declared their independence are Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. So the Russian Empire was already at a loss of land and stability. So that helped the Bolsheviks.
Part 12: Red Victory was an Inevitability
The Bolshevik’s didn’t need the Red Terror to win the war. The Cold War would still happen without the French Revolution. The seeds of Marxism were already planted before the French Revolution (Part 2 and 4). So really the Russian Revolution and the Cold War would have happened without the French Revolution.
November
Titled: The Future of my Jollies (don’t count this as a jolly (jollie? I don’t know) unless you’d like to)
So this is a brief summary of my grand “plan” for the second semester. So this year I’ve gotten heavy into philosophy, and I want a way to express that! Who wouldn’t want to express their interests? So what have I done? Well, I have simply put together a series of jollies. The series touches upon many different philosophers and philosophies. These philosophers include Bataille, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Striner, Marx, Zizek, and so many more! It’s about 20 jollies long and I’ve written 10. So get hyped for next semester! As always, stay free, Evan Jack.
Titled: A Critique of Capitalism-Old Version
The Problems With Capitalism
Let’s go over a few critiques that Marxists make.
Critique 1: Inequality
So this is an argument thrown around a lot by the left. The right to counter arguments of inequality, usually reference the U.S.S.R., North Korea, PRC, Vietnam, Yugoslavian SFR, etc. as they had huge wealth inequality. The right also references how global poverty has declined, and living conditions have gotten better, for most of the world. So when further looking into the inequality argument, I learned something new. The argument isn’t that capitalism causes worse inequality than left-wing economic systems. The argument is that Capitalism sustains itself on inequality. Capitalism requires inequality [1].
Critique 2: Racism
A lot of people claim capitalism is the root cause of racism. Many radical leftists claim capitalism caused the slave trade, which lead to racism towards blacks [2]. Another argument put forward is that racism made by the bourgeoise to further oppress the working class [3]. The idea is the bourgeoise use racism to divide workers from overthrowing them. By having a dividing factor of race, the proletariat will never be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie; as the focus is on race struggles, instead of class struggles.
Critique 3: Violence and Stability
Another critique of capitalism is that it is maintained on violence [4]. Without class violence, capitalism can’t be maintained. It is the slavery of the proletariat that keeps the general capitalist economy running. It is the working hands of the proletariat that the bourgeoisie stamps on. The bourgeoisie often uses suppersionary methods to, well, suppress the Proletariat. These methods include race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.
Conclusion: Is Capitalism Bad?
The idea of capitalism being bad is obviously not new. I will admit capitalism isn’t perfect, as nothing can be! But Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Ultra-Leftism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, Titoism, Bordigism, Posadism, Trotskyism, Haoxism, Pol Pot Thought, Juche, National Communism of Romania, etc. always just end in something worse. None of the ills of modern-day capitalism are anywhere close to being as bad as the ills of the U.S.S.R., the PRC, etc. As always, overthrow the bourgeoisie, Evan Jack.
Works Cited
- http://web.archive.org/web/20010905051630/http://speakout.com/petitions/1475.html
2. http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no12/no12capitalismandracism.html
3. http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism
4. https://www.greanvillepost.com/special/Kovel,%20Enemy%20of%20Nature%20(2007).pdf Pg. 121–122
Titled: Morality, Egoism, and True Freedom
First I’m going to give a little precursor for what you’re going to see next semester for my philosophy series. I’m going to balance the content learning with my outside learning like you asked me too; so basically three Evan jollies, three School jollies. Enjoy!
Morality, Egoism, and True Freedom
So when looking at all of the philosophes we learned about, there is always an idea of morality, whether explicitly stated or underlying. So the question for today’s argumentative piece is why does morality matters.
Part 1: What is Morality?
Morality is defined as ‘principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior; a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society; the extent to which an action is right or wrong’. So by looking at the definitions, we can see, morality is based and subjugated on ideas of right and wrong. Okay, so what is right and wrong?
Part 2: Right, Wrong, and Subjectivity
Right is defined as ‘morally good, justified, or acceptable’. Wrong is defined as ‘unjust, dishonest, or immoral’. So then we go back to the root of the problem: what is moral? So we look towards other keywords in the definitions. Justified, which is defined as ‘having done for, good or a legitimate reason’. Then unjust which is defined as ‘not based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair’. For the latter and former words and definitions, both run into the problem of subjectivity, as well as ambiguity, of morality. Then when looking at acceptable, there is subjectivity on what is right and wrong. Then on dishonesty, there is subjectivity on what is dishonest. So, everything pertaining to morality is subjective.
Part 3: What’s Wrong with Subjectivity?
Morality is used as a base to advocate for policy changes; morality is used in debates, as something to uphold and weigh things by; morality is used to measure actions as well. So this is where the problem begins. If we make policy decisions and large decisions in our life based on morality that’s not good.
Part 4: The Question
So here comes the question. If we measure things by morality, but morality isn’t objective; how do we measure things by morality. If it morality is subjective, how is it even possible to say something is moral?
Part 5: The Answer
We don’t, can’t, shouldn’t, and are unable to truly call, weigh, base, determine, measure, etc. anything by, or on, etc. morality. The reason for this extreme answer is morality isn’t real.
Part 6: The Solution
Instead, we should reject morality, reject it’s dictation over and on our lives. Morality is just this fake “value” that is used by people of constructed “authority”. Then after coming to the conclusion of morality being fake, and just something that holds down the individual; we start to question more abstractions. We start to question the government, community, power relations, hierarchies, religion, etc. So let’s go deeper.
Part 7: Power Relations
If you have ever wondered why anything non-physical abstraction has power over you, it is because you let it. The only reason the President is elevated to the place he is, is because we let him (I don’t have anything against President Trump). There is one difference between an unemployed person living on the street and the President of the United States; abstracted power!
Part 8: Spooky Spooks (abstractions)
Now the mind behind the philosophy that heavily influenced this piece of writing is Johann Kaspar Schmidt, or as he is commonly referred to as Max Striner. Max Stirner created the philosophy known as egoism. Max Striner also coined the term spooks, which are abstractions or the things that “hold the ego down” i.e. morality, constructed authority, government, religion, etc. When I say spook I do not mean a racial slur.
Part 9: Should We All Be Egoists?
It is your choice, but know egoism has its flaws. The ego, or the main subject of egoism, is a spook in it of itself. The ego is a non-physical abstraction i.e. spook.
Part 10: Fascism (Oh no, I’M TRIGGGGGGGGERED)
The fact these abstractions hold us down is just an example of Oedipus, psychoanalysis, and micro fascism. But these concepts and philosophies are for another time, like Deleuze and Guattari. As always, bust them spooks, Evan Jack.
Further Reading: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own
Titled: Micro-Fascism, Schizophrenia, and D&G
Here is a little more of what’s to come next semester.
Micro-Fascism, Schizophrenia, and D&G
As french philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari put it, “God is a lobster”. No, I’m kidding, but that was in their most famous book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Though God being a lobster is not the subject of this argumentative piece, fascism is.
Part 1: Humans Desire for Fascism!
Many people in today’s society vote for people who advocate for policies that are contrary to their situation. Deleuze and Guattari noticed this. They theorized that human’s desire for oppression comes from the belief that people should repress their desires. People succumbing to this “technique” of oppression is what readies them to accept fascism. To Deleuze, fascism was also present in the human being, not just government. This type of fascism he dubbed micro-fascism. He claimed it is our love for and fascination with power, that throws us towards micro-fascism.
Part 2: Society’s Desire for Fascism!
To Deleuze, our society creates vast amounts of pressure. And it is this societal pressure that makes you conform to societal “norms”. One of these societal norms is don’t die. This desire leads to a new desire for an existence without suffering, but to gain this you must give up your freedom and conform.
Part 3: The Desire for Oppression: A Social Function or More?
To Deleuze the desire for oppression was much more than just a social function, it was a psychological phenomenon exported and sustained by Freudian psychoanalysis, and Freud’s idea of the nuclear family, mom, dad, and me. By having an ideal family unit, people are taught to deny desire and to be ashamed of atypical wants. As Wisecrack’s 8-bit Philosophy puts it, “To give into any inclinations is perverted, and to repress these desires is natural”. To D&G psychoanalysis is complicit in this entire scheme to make people feel inferior.
Part 4: Oedipus
D&G attributes this complex to Oedipus, the man who killed his dad, and married his mother. It is Freud’s Oedipus Complex that oversimplifies the complex desires of groups and people, and in turn, constantly marginalizes different “abnormal” groups. Societal pressure dictates anything outside of normal is to be rejected. These oedipal ideas are everywhere, omnipresent almost; they teach people to love repression and hate desire.
Part 5: The Solution
The solution to Freudian psychoanalysis is contra-psychoanalysis or as Deleuze and Guattari dubbed it, Schizoanalysis. Schizoanalysis is that which is not based on normalcy, power, sexuality, or repression. Against Oedipus, they present Anti-Oedipus, fascist fighting, desiring machine. They propose these two things against this cult of psychoanalysis that makes people love and accept fascism. D&G instead asks us to throw off the chains and shackles of Freudian psychoanalysis and Oedipus; they further ask us to embrace desire.
Part 6: Were D&G Right?
Deleuze and Guattari held many beliefs that I don’t agree with! For example, they heavily argue against capitalism; Deleuze, before his suicide, even announced that he would be writing a book titled La Grandeur de Marx (The Greatness of Marx). Though their critiques of capitalism are a subject for another time. Do I think D&G was right about micro-fascism and humanity’s desire for oppression? Yes and no. Yes, I do think they are right about how society can condition us to love oppression, and that micro-fascism can exist. But no, I do not agree on the method to solve it, nor some assumptions made by Deleuze and Guattari. I don’t think Schizoanalysis is the way to go. Deleuze and Guattari believe that schizophrenics have nothing wrong with them, that society “fixing” them is bad. This idea of schizophrenics not having anything wrong with them is just bad. They also assume fascism is bad, but give no reasoning why. Letting sadistic serial killers fulfill their desires is inherently bad. They also need to explain why desire is good, why human autonomy and freedom are good as well. As always, God is a lobster, Evan Jack.
December
Titled: Napoleon: The Sexist
Napoleon shouldn’t be someone revered rather he should be looked towards with shame. Why do I say this? I say this because Napoleon was an extremely sexist person. He has said women are slaves to men, and that they are just baby machines, he even said men under the control of their wives aren’t even alive. This absolutely horrendous ideology is why we need to reject him.
Now in response to this, you might say we need to separate the ideas of someone with their actual actions. According to this logic, then every person who says racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. things but doesn’t act on it shouldn’t be vilified. I understand problematic jokes but outright saying women should be slaves to men is not it, chief. Just my thoughts, Evan Jack.
Titled: Napoleon: The Racist
So I’m back at it again, pointing out the horrible stuff Napoleon did and said.
So we last looked out how he was an extremely sexist person, now we are going to look towards racism.
Napoleon, like other European leaders, was a racist. Though he has few statements on race, he has actions on race. Napoleon re-established the French slave trade. He preferred any white person to a black person when it comes to a soldier. Napoleon has even said, he didn’t want the Blacks to be free in Saint Domingo, not because, of economics, but rather, he didn’t want the blacks to be free. Overall, Napoleon isn’t really living up to this “greatest man to breath” concept. These are just my thoughts, Evan Jack.
Titled: Napoleon, Nationalism, Ableism, and the Value of Life
Napoleon was a nationalist. But his form of nationalism is different to the others. He was a ultra-nationalist, in the sense, of the value of life. I will elaborate. For Napoleon life and the nation were inseperable. You couldn’t have one without the other. But is this true?
Of course not! Napoleon’s philosophical ideas about one should die for their nation rather than live and that a great life was worse than one where you die in battle, are just wrong ideas. They really just lead to a dehumanized state. Also Napoleon’s logic is very ableist. If one cannot true live without a battle for their nation; are people who are disabled and CAN’T fight not able to live. It’s just rather problamatic. This idea of Napoleon’s ableist logic, just furthers my critique of him, and how he wasn’t the “greatest man to breath”. Just my thoughts, Evan Jack.
Titled: Napoleon: Not the Greatest Man to Breath
Napoleon was a horrible, racist, sexist, ableist, and problamtic person. He reinstaded the slave trade, said women were property, and basically excluded disabled people from being able to live a good life. Though he was a great military startegist, so were the Nazi generals, like Rommel. Napoleon also used the drug of religion to sedate the poor, not letting them escape poverty. Napoleon was a sad and depressed person. He could only embrace his melancholy. Esstentially Napoleon is that bullied kid, who later in life comes out on top, but instead of being compassionate, he abuses everyone. Napoleon isn’t even close to other leaders. Though Stalin killed a bunch of people, at least he did it in pursuit of communism. Napoleon just did it to be that cool and popular, hip kid. The biggest problem and the thing that truely held him back from being the Greatest man to ever live was his height (That was a joke). Overall, Napoleon was a bad person, who we shouldn’t revere, and instead should reject. He didn’t do anything except bring an already dying France, to be the global hegemon for a few decades. Just my thoughts, Evan Jack.
Titled: Significant Learning
The most significant thing that I learned this semester is philosophy. Specifically in the Enlightenment unit. This unit is significant to me because it prompted and spurred my my intrest in philosophy. I was given a new thing to study after school, write studies on, and now I’m even writing a book about philosophy. Before the Enlightenment unit I was very, very, unitrested in philosophy. I disregarded it as borning, and not useful. But then I went on wikipedia to learn more about the Enlightenment, and that led me to the counter-Enlightenment wikipedia page. This led me to Nietzsche, which heavily influnenced my philosophy and what I’m writing in my book. I am writing jollies on philosophy for the second semester and I will obviously post them. I think without out the Enlightenment unit, I would still be politically oriented, instead of what I am now: philosophically oriented. Overall, I am basically indebt to you [REDACTED]. Just my thoughts, Evan Jack.
Titled: A Critique of the Right: Starting off the Semester with a Bang
By: Evan Jack
Starting “Notes”
Please read all of this and ask questions. I put a lot of time an effort in to this JOLLIE and would appreciate more than just radio silence, as my other, more philosophical and longer, JOLLIES recieved. And I would like counter arguments, and just, I guess, clash or activity with this JOLLIE. Thanks, Comrade Evan.
Part I: The Introduction
Part 1: Prelude
This critique of the Right is due to three things. 1. My politics have changed, I don’t know what I am politically, but I know what I’m not. 2. Napoleon and Peter the great, both have an abhorrent ideology, which is very ultra-nationalist (gotta relate it to that in-class learning content, oh yeah baby). Though Peter some how, impoverished most of the Proletariat in Russia at the time, but still gained their love and support, I don’t know how he managed to pull that off, but I digress.
Part II: The Critique
Part 1: A Critique of Tradition
Religion is one of the backbones of the right, in the modern political landscape of the United States of America. Religion also creates tradition, another backbone of conservative politics. I mean it is in the name, CONSERVE-ative, the conserve in conservative, is the goal of the ideology. The goal being, to preserve traditions. So what’s wrong with tradition? Well, it is simple: traditions are useless. They only stop progress and keep us from moving forward as a species. I don’t get anything out of the traditions of the past, I’m in the present. The other problem with tradition is, it’s used as a weapon. Tradition is used to criticize the future. Which is very reactionary and regressive. Accelerationism gang.
Part 2: A Critique of Nationalism
Nationalism is one of the worst ideologies, it is just trash. Self-identified nationalists often misguide and lie about the impacts of nationalism, so I’m going to demystify this garbage. Nationalism causes so much war it’s crazy. “Direct causality can be drawn between nationalism and war. The greater the number of stateless individuals who hold nationalistic sentiments, the greater the likelihood of war” (Bingham). This is the furthered by Klitou,
“Nationalism has been the most pathogenic force in history. It has replaced religion as the dominant “weapon of mass division,” and as such has become the dominant cause of wars, bigotry, fascist regimes and gross human rights violations… The inward take on identity, created by nationalism, dehumanizes human beings… and nationalism was used to justify the mass murdering of nations deemed inferior” (Klitou).
The Klitou article is very good at explaining why Nationalism is a burning TRASH CAN!
When we further look at Napoleon’s nationalism, it gets even worse. Napoleon justfies death for the nation. To live and live a good life is die and fight for one’s nation, according to Napoleon’s logic. This logic justifies dehumanization for the gain of the state, which is abhorrent.
Part 3: A Critique of Capitalism V2 (Electric Boogaloo)
So I used to be a very big capitalist, but then I realized two major faults. The first major fault is violence. Capitalism is inherently violent because it normalizes inequality. It makes inequality apart of “human nature”. Morgan furthers this idea of capitalism sustaining itself on inequality, saying
“Capitalism has become far too corrupt to be functional. The economic structure has become suicidal… Capitalism closely resembles a pyramid system: the fewer, the richer on the top, while the bottom expands with the poor; this structure is a necessary aspect of capitalism. Equality does not fit into the equation. Capitalism runs on the principle of “competition” (Morgan).
Taylor furthers this, saying,
“Capitalism is a system that is based on the exploitation of the many by the few. Because it is a system based on gross inequality, it requires various tools to divide the majority — racism and all oppressions under capitalism serve this purpose. Moreover, oppression is used to justify and “explain” unequal relationships in society that enrich the minority that live off the majority’s labor” (Taylor).
The violence of inequality is needed for the survival of capitalism. The second thing that pushed me away from capitalism was the idea of knowledge. Tumino sums this idea of knowledge up perfectly as he says,
“such arguments authorize capitalism without gender, race, discrimination and thus accept economic inequality as an integral part of human societies… Such an understanding of social inequality is based on the fundamental understanding that the source of wealth is human knowledge and not human labor” (Tumino).
This idea of knowledge, of capital, is infected with the bourgeois theory that inequality is an integral part of humanity, and that the source of capital is knowledge. When in fact the source of capital is labor. These two things pushed me away from capitalism.
Part 4: A Critique of Right-Wing Libertarianism, the Anarchist Right, and Objectivism
Let’s first start with the critique of right-wing Libertarianism. Libertarianism’s principles of just acquisition, just transfer, and the N.A.P. is just utopian thought. They fail to take into account luck and the unfairness of nature. This makes it inevetiable that people are advantaged and disadvangted in a Libertarian society. Next let’s go to the critique of the Anarchist Right. Chomsky critiques it very well, saying,
“Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn’t the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of “free contract” between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else” (Chomsky).
If the ideology of the Anarchist right was to ever be implemented, it would result in, according to Chomsky, “forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history” (Chomsky). The implementation of right wing anarchy would result in oppression worse than that of the U.S.S.R., the Nazis, and so many other tyrannical governments. Chomsky also notes, Anarcho-Capitalism will never be implemented into a society. Next, let’s go to the critique of Objectivism. Objectivism is a highly flawed ideology. The creator of the ideology, Ayn Rand, based the entirety of the political ideology of a flawed assumption. The flawed assumption being, communism is the absolute evil, therefore, the absolute opposite of it is the absolute good. This assumption is just wrong, communism isn’t the absolute evil, some parts are good, therefore it isn’t absolutely bad. Parker and Robephilles beat Objectivism to death, saying,
“Objectivism, has become a rather odious cult in the United States… Maxims are really all they are because Rand rarely gives justification for any of her claims… Objectivist Metaphysics are a complete con job. The whole point of the study of metaphysics is to try and derive objective reality from the subjective reality that human beings experience through their senses and consciousness… Objectivist Metaphysics are a complete con job. The whole point of the study of metaphysics is to try and derive objective reality from the subjective reality that human beings experience through their senses and consciousness… Hume stated that a moral value (an ought) cannot be derived from a physical fact (an is). Rand is actually aware of this famous philosophical problem… The funny thing is that Rand bases her own morality on one of these intrinsic human values and that value is being human itself” (Robephilles).
Objectivism just gets absolutely dismantled by this critique above. Gaylin and Jennings then critiques all three, saying,
“The dark side of the culture of autonomy is becoming increasingly apparent… Individualism, privacy, and rights claims are sometimes so overblown that they become caricatures of themselves… First, it invites a politically; socially reactionary backlash that could threaten civil liberties across the board, and not just the exaggerated ones. Equally dangerous, more subtle and insidious, is the possibility that it will come to undermine the very social and psychic infrastructure upon which social order, and hence the conditions for autonomy itself, rests” (Gaylin and Jennings).
The movements for this “radical autonomy” will just lead to less autonomy.
Part 5: A Critique of the Alt-Lite and Alt-Right
First, the critique of the Alt-Lite. The Alt-Lite really is just the stepping stone before the ideology of the Alt-Right. The Alt-Lite enjoys masking their racist, sexist, and homophobic tendinces with “facts” and “logic”. What we need to understand is the Right and the Left have different “facts” and “logic”. Look towards how bourgeois Capitalists have a different theory of how capital is accumulated. The distinction between the Alt-Lite and the Alt-Right is easy: one has closted beliefs, the other has come out of the closet. The Alt-Right are the ones who have come out of the closet. They declare and endorse their horrid ideology, full of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Their ideology is disgusting. I’m not going to go very deep into this critique. If you say my critique of the Alt-Right is bad, and don’t ecknowledge their horrendous beliefs, IT’S TIME TO STOP. Don’t defend the horrible beliefs of the Alt-Right, just don’t.
Part II: Answers to Counter Critiques
[Defenders will be in red, I will be in black]
Part 1: Answers to a defense of Capitalism
Some might say, in defense of capitalism, but Evan, it causes a growth in the economy which helps everyone! This is faulty logic, wealth inequality is just exasterbated. Look towards the U.S., we have a great economy it’s growing in a rather good fashion, but we have horrible inequality. The next argument I hear some say is, but Evan, the poor of today live better than the kings of old. This is because of technology *wow*. Then I hear you say, Capitalism is what causes this technology. To this I say, look torwards the U.S.S.R., a non-capitalist country, that made so many technological discoveries in the 20th Century. They even had better nuclear technology, some of the most advanced technology humans have ever developed, than the USA, see the Tsar Bomba. Anything you put in the comments, refuting my critique about capitalism, I will answer (with evidence of course).
Part 2: Answers to a defense of the Alt-Lite and Alt-Right
First, if you defend the Alt-Lite, that isn’t fine, but I won’t be too critical. But if you defend the Alt-Right, that is distugusting and just bad. Now you might say but it is their freedom of speech and their first admenment to believe what they believe, and to speak and voice their beliefs. Sure, but we shouldn’t encourage such an distgusting ideology.
Final Notes
I will be writing JOLLIES that are similar to this one, in terms of length and amount of sources. I will write the ultimate JOLLIE, as my last JOLLIE. I will post it after my farewell JOLLIE. This ultimate JOLLIE will probably just be a summary of my politics, philosophy, etc., and like this JOLLIE, it will have critiques, answers to counter arguments, etc. This ultimate JOLLIE could also just be a very very very indepth critique of capitalism.
Works Cited
Bingham, James. “How Significant Is Nationalism as a Cause of War?” E, 19 June 2012, www.e-
ir.info/2012/06/19/how-significant-is-nationalism-as-a-cause-of-war/.
Chomsky, Noam. “NOAM CHOSMKY ON ANARCHO-CAPITALISM.” Wayback Machine,
Flag.blackened.net, 0AD,
web.archive.org/web/20161206073148/http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/chomsky-on-ac.txt.
Gaylin, Willard, and Bruce Jennings. The Perversion of Autonomy: the Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society. Free Press, 1996.
Klitou, Demetrius. “The Friends and Foes of Human Rights,” The Journal of the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, 2005, http://www.drexel.edu/coas/ask/essays-articles/friends- foes-human-rights.asp.
Morgan, Kelly. “Capitalism is Evil” Speakout.org, 23 July,
2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20010905051630/http://speakout.com/petitions/1475.html.
Robephiles. “The Virtue of Stupidity: A Critique of Ayn Rand and Objectivism.” Owlcation, Dorothy Parker, 4 Feb. 2019, owlcation.com/humanities/The-Virtue-of-Stupidity-A-Critique-of-Ayn-Rand-and-Objectivism.
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Race, Class and Marxism.” SocialistWorker.org, 4 Jan. 2011, socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism.
Tumino, Stephen. “What Is Orthodox Marxism and Why It Matters Now More than Ever.” What Is Orthodox Marxism and Why It Matters Now More Than Ever Before, Red Critique, 2001, redcritique.org/spring2001/whatisorthodoxmarxism.htm.
Titled: Death, Philosophy, and Shakespeare
Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst, once said, “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a story of suicide, fate, and love. The “star-crossed” lovers, Romeo and Juliet, are from rival families, the Capulets (Juliet) and the Montagues (Romeo). They meet at a party hosted by the Capulets and immediately fall in love. Their love spurs the rest of their story to its end. The story’s end being a joint-suicide between the two lovers. Their death resolves the conflicts of the story, though Romeo tries to avoid death. Nevertheless, the two lovers’ tale of beautiful annihilation is interwoven in the very fabric of the night sky. By analyzing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet through the lens of psychoanalysis and philosophy, the story’s themes of suicide, fatalism, and love can be better understood.
Romeo and Juliet’s extreme suicidal impulsiveness is best understood through the lens of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, once said, “The goal of all life is death.” Hearing of Juliet’s death, Romeo travels to the house of an Apothecary in Mantua. He arrives at the Apothecary’s house and buys poison. Romeo, now in possession of the poison, goes to Juliet’s tomb. Once at the tomb, Romeo meets Paris, and then in a battle, kills him. Romeo then approaches Juliet and seeing her “lifeless” body says, “O, here will I set up my everlasting rest… A dateless bargain to engrossing death… Here’s to my love [Drinks.] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die” (5.3.109–120). It is obvious why Romeo killed himself. His life was already over! To Romeo, Juliet was his life. With the death of Juliet, Romeo could only “rationalize” that he must also die. Freud attributes two things to the acceptance and then the action of self-annihilation: depression and narcissism. To analyze the depression of Romeo, there need not be much analyzing. Romeo is depressed because his life is over. He has nothing to live for, and therefore, ends it. To analyze the narcissism of Romeo is much more difficult than the analysis of his depression. Romeo, first, attributes his ego (life, person, etc.) to Juliet. So with the death of Juliet i.e. his ego, the ultimate annihilation of a narcissist happens. Romeo, having the death of his ego take place, can only do one thing: kill himself. Juliet then wakes. She wakes only to see her life, dead, by her side. Juliet then kisses him but does not let the poison take her. Instead, she says, “This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die” (3.3.170), and then stabs herself. Juliet’s suicide is different. Juliet kills herself for a different reason, which Freud and many other psychoanalysts have identified. When Juliet’s ego feels abandoned by Romeo, it commits self-denigration, as Freud describes it. The concept of self-denigration, in the context of suicide, is rather easy to explain. Juliet’s ego feels abandoned by Romeo and his love (or her protective forces). The ego, feeling abandoned, surrenders, and then dies. This formulation of self-denigration and suicide can be seen as self-attack due to the loss of love. Given this psychoanalytic analysis of Romeo’s depression and Narcissism, as well as Juliet’s ego-death, and self-denigration, the ideas and motivations of Romeo and Juliet’s joint suicide have been better understood.
The theme of fatalism present in Romeo and Juliet can be best understood through the lens of philosophy. Joseph Campbell, the writer of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, said, “The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won’t!” The Chorus rises to the stage to utter the prologue, shouting the notorious sonnet to the audience. The Chorus then says, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” (Prologue.5–6). Fatalism is defined as “a doctrine that events are fixed in advance so that human beings are powerless to change them” (Merriam-Webster). The inevitability of the two lovers’ joint-suicide is there from the beginning. There is no escape to their deaths. To better understand this concept of fatalism, one should look towards the Idle Argument made by Cicero. The Idle Argument proposes a thought experiment. If it is fate a person will recover from an illness, then said person will recover without calling a doctor. If this person is fated to not recover from the illness, then they will not recover, even if they call a doctor. It is either fated this person will recover from the illness, or they will not recover from the illness. Therefore, calling the doctor is of no use. The Stoics of Ancient Greece responded to this Idle Argument by proposing the idea of knowing one’s fate. If one knows their “fate”, then one can deny their “fate”. An outbreak of disease ensures fate be done. It is only fated Romeo will not read Friar’s letter. Romeo hears of Juliet’s death. Romeo knows only fate can separate him from Juliet, but he irrationally reacts. Romeo shouts, “Then I defy you, stars” (5.1.24). Romeo tries to defy his fate, but not even the Epicureans grant him help. Epicureanism gives us further insight into fatalism. The Epicureans of post-Socratic Greece believed voluntary actions are rational, and fatalistic actions are irrational. So, if action is rational, then it is voluntary. The problem with Romeo’s action is the dominance of irrationality in his action. All would agree, trying to defy one’s fate is not only futile but also irrational. Romeo can not escape; there is no salvation from his fated death. Romeo had a chance at escape, but instead, lets his irrational emotions take hold. Given this analysis through a lens of philosophy, the idea of fatalism in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been better understood.
The theme of love present in Romeo and Juliet can be best understood through the lens of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, once said: “When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves”. Romeo, still filled with love, goes to the house of the Capulets. He arrives at the house and immediately hears Juliet. He hears Juliet asking why she had to fall in love with Romeo. Romeo then calls to Juliet. Juliet, confused as to how Romeo got past the stone walls, questions the path of his entrance. Romeo, to not keep his love waiting, says, “With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt” (2.2.66–68). Love can transcend all things. In the case of Romeo, love transcends stone walls. This philosophical idea of love being able to transcend and persevere all things is very prevalent in Mysticism. A key concept in Mysticism and unlimited love is a surrender of the will to power. The will to power is the unconscious exercise of power in all of our actions. When Romeo and Juliet’s love seeks not to gain power but to accept the other’s vulnerabilities, their love transcends all things. It becomes “ultimate love”, as Mysticism describes it. Further looking at the quote, there is this concept of love compelling one to express their love. Looking back to Mysticism, there is this idea of ultimate love compelling progress in oneself. This progress can be viewed as progress in expression. This truly radical idea of unending, ultimate love is what gives warrant to Romeo’s metaphorical claim of flying over walls, in order to exercise and profess his ultimate love. The moon shines above their long professions. Juliet and Romeo, having both escalated their professions of love to the extreme, have almost nothing left to do. Romeo then escalates his profession of love and asks Juliet to marry him. Juliet accepts the proposal, and goes on to say, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite” (2.2.133–136). In psychoanalysis, there are many types of love, but the love that will be analyzed is sensual and more romantic love. In this psychoanalytic analysis of love, Freud’s theory of narcissism is prevalent once again. Freud claims people fall in love with people, who are mirror images of themselves. The logic Freud forwards is simple: by reciprocating love to one’s mirror self, one is furthering their love. This theory of narcissistic love is furthered by the quote. When Juliet gives more and more love to Romeo, the more and more love she has for herself. Through the expansion of love between Romeo and Juliet, the expansion of the self-ego also takes place. This idea of narcissistic love created by Freud helps better define why Juliet and Romeo were so engrossed in their love. Given this analysis through a lens of philosophy and psychoanalysis, the ideas and motivations behind Romeo and Juliet’s love have been better understood.
After analyzing the themes of suicide, fate, and love present in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet through philosophical and psycho-analysis, these themes are better understood. Romeo and Juliet’s joint suicide was best understood through psychoanalytic analysis. Freud showed the inherent narcissism at the core of Romeo’s suicide as well as Juliet’s self-denigration. The theme of fate present in the story was best understood through philosophical analysis. The Stoics of ancient Greece showed the inevitability of fate and Epicureans of post-Socratic Greece showed the irrationality of Romeo’s attempt at denial of his fate. The theme of love prevalent in the book was best understood through philosophical and psychoanalytic analysis. The philosophy of Mysticism presented how love knows no bounds and transcends all things. Then Freud demystifies the narcissism present in Romeo and Juliet’s love. In conclusion, the Stoics, Epicureans, and Freud have demystified the themes of suicide, fate, and love common in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. “Joseph Campbell Quote.” AZQuotes, No Date,
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1461166. Accessed 22 November 2019.
“Fatalism.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster,
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatalism. Accessed 22 November 2019.
Freud, Sigmund. “Sigmund Freud Quote.” AZQuotes, No Date,
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/605352. Accessed 22 November 2019.
Freud, Sigmund. “Sigmund Freud Quote.” AZQuotes, No Date,
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/506568. Accessed 1 December 2019.
Lacan, Jacques. “Jacques Lacan Quote.” AZQuotes, No Date,
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/165852. Accessed 22 November 2019.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Language and Literacy. Student ed. Upper Saddle
River: Prentice-Hall, 2010. Print.
Notes
The quotes at the beginning of each paragraph (after the topic sentence) should not be counted in the number of quotes I have; the quotes are there for extra insight.
The commentary is rather long, mainly because I am tackling questions of psychoanalysis and philosophy, which I have an extreme lack of familiarity with the former.
The third body paragraph is backed by a rather obscure philosophy i.e. Mysticism. This is only because many philosophers didn’t view love in a good light, or rather, a “all-powerful” light.
Further Reading
On Self-Denigration and Suicide:
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300128426_Psychoanalytic_theories_of_suicide?enrichId=rgreq-eba6312cf46ff88798d2392143e87f59-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMwMDEyODQyNjtBUzo0NTg4ODkzODU3NzkyMDBAMTQ4NjQxOTE2MzE3NA%3D%3D&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766738/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/914450
On Fatalism (Stoics/Idle Argument):
On Love (Psychoanalysis):
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201612/love-and-psychoanalysis
- https://blogs.psychcentral.com/practical-psychoanalysis/2015/03/what-psychoanalysis-says-about-love/
On Love (Mysticism):
2020
January
Titled: Suffering, Desire, the Will, and Transcendence
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher, who wrote The World as Will and Representation, his most famous work. When looking at the previous analysis about Deleuze and Guattari, we can see they want to free desire. But why? What is so good about desire? Well to Schopenhauer, nothing.
Part 1: Life is Suffering!
Schopenhauer believed all life is suffering. He believed everything that lives, strives, wants, etc. is suffering. As Kerns, when analyzing Schopenhauer, puts it, “Life wants, and because its wants are mostly unfulfilled, it exists largely in a state of unfulfilled striving and deprivation” [1]. Since we can never obtain lasting happiness, we will always suffer. So now that we have established that life is suffering (according to Schopenhauer), we ask why? Of course Schopenhauer has an answer.
Part 2: Desire, the Root Cause of Suffering!
Schopenhauer believed desire is what causes suffering. After we obtain something we want, we want more. Desire is everlasting, therefore suffering is everlasting. Many, to counter Schopenhauer, say life is full of joy and pleasure. To this Schopenhauer states, joy and pleasure are reactions to fulfilling a desire. Therefore desire is a prerequisite to all joy and pleasure in life.
Part 3: Is Desire Pointless?
Schopenhauer digs this pit of suffering and despair even deeper. All desire is pointless, all wants futile, we all die; so what’s the point? Schopenhauer states there is none.
Part 4: Schopenhauer’s Solution to Suffering
Schopenhauer proposed the only cure to suffering, is ceasing to desire, rejecting it. He wants us as individuals, to quiet our will. The problem is according to Schopenhauer, is that no one can voluntarily chose to reject desire. Not even Schopenhauer reached this level of Nirvana, though.
Part 5: Is Schopenhauer Right?
No! Schopenhauer assumes that desire always generates suffering, but this isn’t always true! According to Jamie Mayerfeld, “We might even say that, for many people, happiness is characterized by the generation of new desires faster than they can be satisfied” [2]. So Mayerfeld’s idea that desires can lead to happiness, directly counters Schopenhauer’s ideas. So Schopenhauer isn’t right? He can be, but also can’t be; it all depends on your beliefs and acceptance or rejection of his ideas. A question you might have is, well if desire doesn’t cause suffering, what does? Well, in my next piece we will look at the philosopher Epicurus, who believed the fear of death is what causes all suffering! As always, stay free from desire, Evan Jack.
Work Cited
- http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-suff.html
2. Suffering and Moral Responsibility. P. 86. file:///home/chronos/u-802e49f4e43ad0ece32f667d4bf6d8181f529a97/MyFiles/Downloads/epdf.pub_suffering-and-moral-responsibility-oxford-ethics-s.pdf. (If this link doesn’t work, just contact me and I will email you the pdf).
Titled: Is Suffering Bad?
The idea that suffering is bad isn’t a new idea. The idea that suffering is good is a new idea. So the question I’m going to answer is: suffering bad or good?
Part 1: Is Suffering Bad?
The idea that suffering is bad, isn’t uncommon. Many people commonly acknowledged suffering as what is wrong with life. But is this true? No! Suffering is necessary. Suffering is needed for the human experience. It is key to the human experience. Suffering isn’t, or shouldn’t, be seen with a total negative connotation.
Part 2: Is Suffering Good?
The idea that suffering is good, is very rare. I actually don’t think I’ve seen it before. Now what I mean by is suffering good; isn’t that its not bad, because philosophers like Nietzsche, say suffering shouldn’t be rejected, but Nietzsche isn’t saying suffering is good. Philosophers that advocate for death, do that to escape suffering. This idea that suffering is good is something I’ve never seen. So the answer is no, suffering is not good.
Part 3: If Suffering isn’t Good or Bad, what is it?
Suffering is needed. Without suffering there would be no happiness, no joy, etc. We have to have “negatives” to have “positives”. Without suffering there would be no point to life. You could say, we could achieve things, as a counter to that. But a counter counter to that is: why? Why, or rather what would we strive for. We strive to decrease suffering, to numb the pain of living. But if there is no pain, why live? To be without suffering is to be without humanity. I don’t know what’s next in this series, but I’ll think of something. As always, suffer (I didn’t mean it like that), Evan Jack.
Titled: Fear of Death: The Root of Suffering?
Greek philosopher, Epicurus, has an answer to our previous question of what causes suffering. His answer is the fear of death.
Part 1: The Fear of Death
To Epicurus all humans were striving for a state without pain, suffering, death, etc. He called this state ataraxia. He put forth the idea that all suffering was caused by the desire to live, or the fear of death. He believed all desires, all motivations, happen as a way to block death. One wants more money and power to pay for cures, and have people to care for them. He found this fear to be irrational. He found it to be irrational because death is inevitable. You can’t stop, slow, nor prevent it. So why try? Epicurus says you shouldn’t. Instead, Epicurus presents a solution to suffering.
Part 2: The Solution to Suffering!
Epicurus, of course, had a solution. His solution was to reject the fear of death. If you don’t fear death you are free. You are free from desires, free from pain, free from strife, free from fear, free from suffering. If we don’t fear death, we fear nothing and in turn we don’t suffer. He also put for a form of consequentialism to live by. This form of consequentialism put forth by Epicurus, was just to look at the consequences of every action; and if the action causes suffering, don’t take the action.
Part 3: Was Epicurus Right?
Yes and No! I definitely think he was right that fearing death can cause suffering, but I don’t think that it is the sole or rather root cause. Then if we really dig deep into it, we can see counter ideas. According to Louis Beres, “Fear of death… is essential to human survival… without such fear, states will exhibit an incapacity to confront nonbeing that can hasten their disappearance… individuals, confronting death can give the most positive reality to life itself” [1]. Beres believes that without the fear of death, that life has no value, no meaning; if one does not fear death, why live? So we reach the same question, what causes suffering? Well, we will look at the status of suffering, in my next piece of writing. As always, don’t fear death, Evan Jack. (I don’t agree with everything in this JOLLIE but again that is not the point of this, as I’m looking at these more philosophical stance rather than political).
Work Cited
1. http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb96/beresn.htm*Repost*
I’m reposting this only because formatting would not cooperate last time I posted it.
Fear of Death: The Root of Suffering?
Greek philosopher, Epicurus, has an answer to our previous question of what causes suffering. His answer is the fear of death.
Part 1: The Fear of Death
To Epicurus all humans were striving for a state without pain, suffering, death, etc. He called this state ataraxia. He put forth the idea that all suffering was caused by the desire to live, or the fear of death. He believed all desires, all motivations, happen as a way to block death. One wants more money and power to pay for cures, and have people to care for them. He found this fear to be irrational. He found it to be irrational because death is inevitable. You can’t stop, slow, nor prevent it. So why try? Epicurus says you shouldn’t. Instead, Epicurus presents a solution to suffering.
Part 2: The Solution to Suffering!
Epicurus, of course, had a solution. His solution was to reject the fear of death. If you don’t fear death you are free. You are free from desires, free from pain, free from strife, free from fear, free from suffering. If we don’t fear death, we fear nothing and in turn we don’t suffer. He also put for a form of consequentialism to live by. This form of consequentialism put forth by Epicurus, was just to look at the consequences of every action; and if the action causes suffering, don’t take the action.
Part 3: Was Epicurus Right?
Yes and No! I definitely think he was right that fearing death can cause suffering, but I don’t think that it is the sole or rather root cause. Then if we really dig deep into it, we can see counter ideas. According to Louis Beres, “Fear of death… is essential to human survival… without such fear, states will exhibit an incapacity to confront nonbeing that can hasten their disappearance… individuals, confronting death can give the most positive reality to life itself” [1]. Beres believes that without the fear of death, that life has no value, no meaning; if one does not fear death, why live? So we reach the same question, what causes suffering? Well, we will look at the status of suffering, in my next piece of writing. As always, don’t fear death, Evan Jack. (I don’t agree with everything in this JOLLIE but again that is not the point of this, as I’m looking at these more philosophical stance rather than political).
Work Cited
1. http://www.freeman.org/m_online/feb96/beresn.htm
Titled: Nihilism, Nietzsche, Love, and Life
In my JOLLIE about the Fear of Death, I looked at Epicurus and how he believed the fear of death was the root cause of all suffering. By the end of the writing, I came to the conclusion that he was wrong. And again we had the same question: what causes all suffering? German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche, has an answer.
Part 1: Nihilism, Nietzsche, Love, and Life
Nietzsche was this sort of precursor to post-modernism, he was apart of the counter-enlightenment, and he is considered a if not the popularizer of nihilism in modern-day. When most people think of nihilism they most likely think of Nietzsche. Now onto Nietzsche’s views on suffering. Nietzsche believed that was caused by suffering was wanting to cure the universe of suffering. He believed this view of the world carried with it, the idea that the world is something to be rejected. He believed this would also make life something to be hated as well. Though Nietzsche was a “nihilist”, he loved life. And that is apart of his solution.
Part 2: Nietzsche’s Answer to Suffering
Nietzsche believed the way to transcend suffering is instead to embrace it, rather than reject or try to cure it. This is better put in the words of Phillip Kain,
“He decided to submit to it voluntarily. He decided to accept it fully. He decided that he would not change one single detail of his life, not one moment of pain. He decided to love his fate. At the prospect of living his life over again, over again an infinite number of times, without the slightest change, with every detail of suffering and pain the same, he was ready to say, “Well then! Once more!” (Z IV: “The Drunken Song” 1). He could not change his life anyway. But this way he broke the psychological stranglehold it had over him. He ended his subjugation. He put himself in charge. He turned all “it was” into a “thus I willed it.” Everything that was going to happen in his life, he accepted, he chose, he willed. He became sovereign over his life. There was no way to overcome his illness except by embracing it” [1].
Part 3: A Refreshing Taste of Philosophy
This part of Nietzsche’s philosophy is so refreshing, it is really unseen, not only in this part of philosophy but almost all of philosophy as well. This area of his philosophy is also so empowering! Turning every moment or feeling of helplessness into a moment/feeling of total control. Even when having a horrible life filled with no joy; you say, ‘Well then! Once more!’. It is a very beautiful outlook on life. Some might misunderstand Nietzsche. They may characterize this profound, very radical idea, rather outlook on life, as accepting responsibility for what comes towards you. They may interpret this as ‘Oh I failed at something. I accept that this was the result of my shortcomings”. The latter view is wrong. Nietzsche wants us to embrace it, not feel shameful or take responsibility (as taking responsibility for something, directly implies that there something bad about a result or action there of), but rather than say, ‘I caused this’, say, ‘I willed it!’. I just love this part of Nietzschean philosophy!
Part 4: Nietzsche and Ideas of Man
Nietzsche believed man had two parts: the creative part i.e. the mind, and the created part i.e. the body. According to Nietzsche, the body suffers, rather is meant to; while to mind is to fashion something unexplainable beautiful out of and from this suffering of the body.
Part 5: Nietzsche’s Love of and Affinity to Suffering
Nietzsche believed without suffering, life was just meaningless and absurd. Suffering, to him, was the only thing that bestows value on this place we call the world, and this thing we call consciousness and existence. According to Nietzsche, suffering is the test of a person’s value.
Part 6: Is Nietzsche Right?
Yes and no. Yes, because he is right about viewing suffering as something to be cured; causes people to hate life. No, because suffering can and sometimes should be hated, even viewed a something to be ended. Sometimes it is unavoidable to hate; it is really just a part of life. As always, don’t hate life, embrace it and even the ills that come with it, Evan Jack. (I don’t agree at all with my analysis on Nietzsche. Suffering is not a good thing, and attempting to justify it is reactionary, as it can be used to put down the Proletariat. I’m just using this “blank slate” stance as a way to produce “non-biased” knowledge).
Works Cited
1. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/72853831.pdf
Titled: The Life of Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro was born on the Thirteenth of August 1926, in Biran, Cuba. His parents worked as a sugar cane farmers in the Oriente Province. Castro constantly misbehaved in schools. He was put through 3 different schools: La Salle boarding school in Santiago, the Jesuit-run Dolores School in Santiago, and lastly the Jesuit-run El Colegio de Belén in Havana. In 1945 Castro, went to study law at the University of Havana. He was actively involved in student activism. He became an avid anti-imperialist. He believed that the United States was an imperialist power oppressing the latin american Proletariado and basically creating slaves of the Cuban people. He campaigned for president of the Federation of University Students but he lost. Castro was critical of the current president, Ramon Grau, due to high corruption and government violence against the Cuban population. In 1947, Castro joined the Party of the Cuban People, or the Partido Ortodoxo. It was a party that advocated for social justice, political freedom, and honest as well as transparent government. It was led by Eduardo Chibás. In the 1948 general election, Chibas came in third, and by this time Castro had risen up in the ranks of the party. In 1947, Castro, due to being rather high in the party levels, learned about an expedition that was being planned by Cuban revolutionaries. The expedition’s goal was to overthrow the right-wing U.S. puppet government of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominacan Republic. The current Grau government found out about the planned expedition and, due to U.S. pressure, arrested as many members of the planned expedition as they could find, though Castro evaded arrest. In 1948, Castro helped the liberal cause in Colombia, after the Colombian president was assassinated. In 1948, after the general election, Castro started studying Marxism and continued to move more to the left. Castro then helped campaign for the Cuban anti-racism movement. In 1950, Castro co-founded a legal practice, which focused on poor Cubans and aimed to alleviate poverty. In November of that year he took part in highschool riots in Cienfuegos. The riots were aimed at the government’s ban on student associations. In 1952, Castro formed a group called the Movement. The Movement armed poorer Cubans and was a Anti-Batista movement as well. Castro’s wanted the Movement to aid in his Revolution, but after the Moncada attack in 1953, many in the Movement were jailed and executed. Castro was imprisoned in Santiago, with other revolutionaries. While in jail Castro renamed his movement to the 26th of July Movement. While in prison, Castro started to read more and more Marxist literature, which further influenced his beliefs. In 1955, the government released him, as they perceived him to no longer be a threat. In 1956, Castro’s movement and other Anti-Batista movements led attacks on the current government. This continued until 1957 were the DRE led an attack on the president, which failed and caused the death of many revolutionary leaders. After the attack on the president the CIA started to get involved, and gave aid to the current government. In 1958, Castro’s Revolutionary Movement increased attacks on the Batista government, and due to this increased pressure, the U.S. stop giving aid and weapons to Batista and his government. Due to increased control over the areas controlled by the Batista government and more crackdowns, more and more civilians rebelled against the Batista government. Late in 1958, Castro made deals with Batista military leaders promising not to try them after their victory. Because of the high amount of Batista military officials that deserted and joined the Revolution, the Batista’s had an even more unorganized military. On January 1st, 1959, the Batista government had capitulated to the revolutionaries, and on January 9th, Castro had Havana. For the rest of January and most of February in 1959, a Provisional government was announced. The purpose of the Provisional government was to crackdown and find the few Batista outposts that were left. The Provisional government was not “directly” led by Castro but it was essentially a puppet government. On February 16th, 1959, Castro took direct control of the government. For the rest of 1959 and 1960, Castro went to many countries and met with the leaders of these countries’ respective governments. President Eisenhower refused to meet with Castro and instead Richard Nixon met with him. Castro proclaimed the country a democracy while he was meeting with other leaders. He did this as many countries at the time were very anti-communist. In 1961, Castro suspected many members of the government to be U.S. spies. So Castro order the reduction of government officials. The United States was very upset at this and in response ended “good” relations with Cuba. The CIA led an invasion of Cuba in 1961, it is commonly known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Castro ordered a counter-attack and for some of April, 1961, firefights continued between U.S. supported militias and Castro’s army, until Castro’s army encircled the militias. Castro then captured the remaining U.S. supported militias and interrogated them before returning them back to the U.S. Because of the U.S. supported Coup, Cuba went further left. In 1962, Castro proclaimed the country, democratic socialist. At this the U.S. Government completely ended any relations they had with the Cuban government. And in response to worsening relations with the U.S., Castro deepended relations with the Soviet Union. In 1962, the U.S.S.R. and Cuba made a deal to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. Castro agreed to this deal in order to secure Cuba’s safety. After U.S. air reconnaissance spotted the installation of Soviet Missiles, the Cuban Missile Crisis started. The U.S. demanded for the removal of the missiles and the Soviet Union complied. At this Castro was furious and not so good relations between the U.S.S.R. and Cuba began. On November 25th, 2016, Castro died. Raul Castro took control of the Cuban Government until 2018. Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president in 2019. Castro was a Marxist-Leninist. Castro did not take the traditional Leninst idea of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to heart and his revolution diverged from the traditional Marxist belief that the revolution would be Proletarian in leadership and nature. His main Leninist belief was the fact that Imperialism is the highest form of Capitalism, and because of his Anti-Imperialist stance, which he developed early in his life, this part of Marxist-Leninism particularly resonated with him. Castro’s socialism benefit a lot of the Cuban population, a good example of this is the fact that by the end of his reign Cuba had a 100 percent literacy rate.
February
Titled: Welcome to the Anthropocene
So this weekend, I debated at the high school and today, Sunday, I helped my fellow debater, [REDACTED]. She was apart of the Alabama Round Robin, and she won the entire thing. In finals, she debated [REDACTED] from Vestavia. Against him, she ran what is known as a kritik. A kritik is just German for the English word critique. But the particular kritik she ran was something debaters call anthro. An Anthro kritik just analyzes the human-animal relationship rather than the human-human relationship. People who critique anthro, most commonly, believe that the discrimination humans projected on to animals is what humans projected, or rather, reflected onto ourselves. The subjugation of women was learned from the forced subjugation of animals by man. Reducing black slaves to non-human was a clear wave towards how humans make slaves of animals. How hurt animals were just killed off, as their use was gone, reflects society’s current animosity towards people with disabilities. People who have issues with the advancement of technology identify its development as only started because of the human want to maximize animal subjugation. This rhetoric continues. Humans learned “war” through the primal hunt. We learned to subjugate ourselves from animals. We make hierarchies and the ones below us are animals.
BUUUUUT this is all just rhetoric I don’t believe in the people who are critical of anthro and their positions. BUUUUUT I do find this root cause debate very very very interesting. Being able to identify an overarching root cause of all society’s negatives and ills is a very interesting and powerful, or rather, empowering, idea. Is it the human-animal relationship that molds current human oppression? Could it be capital as I and many other critical theorists, who are more educated than me, have suggested. Could it be race, gender, age, etc? Hopefully, I have will soon have an answer to this. I will critique people who are critical of anthro, animal liberationists, post-humanists, and the latter three’s corresponding movements later on this year in my blog. Thanks, Evan.
Titled: Something I’ve Noticed
This is just something I’ve noticed:
Nationalism.
It is something many identify with. It is something that infulences a lot of things. It has caused death, war, destruction. Ultimately, Nationalism is evil.
Now I have critiqued nationalism before, specifically in my Critique of the Right jollie.
But I want to distance my self from the rant. I want a serious disscusion. So here is the thing, JOLLIES is a place where students discuss in class learning, but these philosophical, post-modern, marxist, etc. lens are useful and rather key to viewing history. Lets start, in a serious, non-rant, way.
Nationalism is bad. It caused WW1, WW2, it perpetuates violence, and hurts everyone in international politics.
I want everyone to know I’m serious when I say people who identify as nationalists aren’t okay (this is not a slight). This is not their fault they just need help to see the light. The light being away from nationalism. This is serious: nationalism hurts people, it causes violence. It has been harnessed by politicains to motivate the population to do violence. The 3rd German Reich, Hitler, the Nazi ideology, was fueled by nationalism. The millions of deaths caused by the Nazis are products of nationalism. Now this is not a ‘oh I hate the nazis jollie’ (though I do hate them), as [REDACTED] generally doesn’t “ad homien” attacks. An example of this is when I called Mike Pence homophobic (https://www.indems.org/a-timeline-of-mike-pences-discrimination-against-the-lgbt-community/), and [REDACTED] did not like that. But again this is not a slight towards [REDACTED]. So we will look at other nationalist than just German WW2 Nazis. So lets look at American Nazis! Looking at the Unite the Right rallies, it is clear, American Nationalism is not exempt from producing violence. A right-wing ultra-nationalist drove over and killed a left-wing counter protester.
Now let’s actually look away from Nazism, and the distugsting ideology that it is, and look at other forms of nationalism.
Now nationalists would die for their country; but the question is why?
Why would you lay down your life? Now there are answers to this question, they could be maybe the values of your country, you value the idea of self-determination, whatever may be the motivation for one’s nationalism, I have a question. My question is why? Why fight for, say the US? Is it because of the fact you value life, liberty, the pursuit of hapiness, etc.? But even then the US is not a force for good, we have overthrown democratically elected governments (chile) in the name of democracy and then institued fascist puppet governments. The US has sent hundreds of thousands to die in Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, etc. in the name of anti-communism, something the public didn’t even understand, and still doesn’t understand. One can defend the aformentioned principles and values without being a tool of the state. So maybe it’s the fact you “must” guard your nations right to self-determination, like many of the Balkan nations and Israel. But at what cost? Looking at Israeli nationalism, we can see that the costs are thousands of Palestian childern and people being killed and held in camps (*wow* kinda like what the nazis did with Jews). But why do the Palestian people even want Palestine? Well, it is because of self-determination, which is rather symptomatic of nationalism.
Overall, Nationalism just causes pain, abandon the ideology. Nationalism only divides humanity. It is only a tool of hate, and its time for some unity. I hope this was helpful, Evan.
Titled: The Prussian Spirt
[Now I know we haven’t learned about the end of WW1 or WW2 yet but we are going to look at it in this jollie]
In July of 1914, Prussia was beautiful. A way to describe the “Prussian spirt” is quality that knows no bounds. The Prussian people really prided themselves in this. They were the best of the best. They “alone” (Yes they had help from Austria Hungry, but not really as A-H was occupied with Serbia and Russia and later on Italy). It is rather insane that by themselves late 1918 October-ish, that they held off the Allied powers without the help of Austria-Hungry, or the Ottomans. So the Prussians were quite efficent, but the question is what happened? Well, a democratic revolution insued in Prussia and it became the Wiemar Republic. There were two communist revolutions and then the repressions of one of those revolutions by the Wiemar Republic almost started “ww2” early (more info about that here->https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbcxwQn0PPA<----It is a very intresting video). Now back to the Wiemar Republic. The main point of this jollie is to analyze what happened to that good ole “Prussian spirt”, which was never seen again after 1918. Well hyperinflation killed it, but why did the nationalism of the Nazi’s not save it. Well, it is simple: they transformed the “Prussian spirt”. It was now the “Ayran spirt”, a new sense of superiority. Now how did this new “Ayran spirt” work out for Germany? Well….. Click this link to find out how well it worked out for them. So that didn’t work out. I really just want to highlight the fact that this odd cultural phenomon of the “Prussian spirt” is crazy. There wasn’t really anything like it. It was calculated, practical, and didn’t understimate it’s enemys. I will probably look at Realpolitik and Weltpolitik in my next jollie. Thanks for reading, Evan.
Titled: E-DAY Feminism, Capital, and War (Writer Choice)
[If you want evidence for any of these things; comment what and I will give you a url]
War is developed from two things: 1. the motive of competition derived from capitalism which ultimately leads to imperialism. 2. Heteropatriarchy. Now Capitalism is what leads to these broader forms of heteropatriarchal violence. This heteropatriarchal violence is further seen within the confines of the first World War. We can see heteropatriarchal violence in what happened to Dorthy Lawerence, who was forced out of the army, after she snuck in as a man, because the army officials though she was a prostitute. Now how can we see heteropatriarchal violence in the homefront? Well, we can easily see how capitalism has influenced everything and enforced heteropatriarchy. Most women worked on the homefront. Why? Well, because of the nuclear family. The nuclear family was amalgamated from capitalism, in order to ensure production efficiency. Now in the nuclear family you would have the man work, and the women take care of the kids. So you may be asking yourself: “Evan is a dummy, women worked in the factories. Proves he is wrong”. To this I have to say, “Nah”. We can see that this is a new form of the nuclear family, I have dubbed it the national nuclear family. While the man was away from home, the country, working, fighting the war, the women was at home, the country, taking care of the home, keeping production going. So check and mate. This is my little critical position and as I said in my last jollie, in my next jollie, for real this time, I will look at realpolitik and weltpolitik.
Titled: Realpolitik, the Death of Reality, Hyperreality, and Baudrillard
Realpolitik
Realpolitik is defined as the politics of reality. It has no ideological convinctions and is best described as ‘radical pragmatism’. Now when looking at the basis of realpolitik there is reality. So many assume that the basis of realpolitik is solid, as reality is solid… right?
The Death of Reality & Hyperreality
Reality is dead and we murdered it. The world has become a system of symbols, signs, signifiers, representations, etc. Through this system reality died and hyperreality was born. This state of hypereality is just our reaction to our divorce from the “real world”. But this “divorice” is more of a widowing, as reality is dead.
Baudrillard
To Baudrillard reality was an imposture, it was an impossibility. For exchange to take place at the speed they currently do between humans, there, to Baudrillard, could not be reality, there could only be hyperreality. Reality is too obvious to be true. To take things literally, in this illusion of a world, is how confusion starts. Baudrillard, when talking about reality said, “For reality asks nothing other than to submit itself to hypotheses… For reality is an illusion, and all thought must seek first of all to unmask it… It must pride itself on not being an instrument of analysis, not being a critical tool” [1].
My Analysis and Critique of Baudrillard’s Hyperreality
The idea of ideology itself requires there to be some underlying reality. So just the sheer fact that there are ideologies, means that there isn’t some illusionary “reality”. The main critique of Baudrillard is the fact that apperance and reality aren’t the same thing. Baudrillard just takes the idea that apperance and reality are the same thing to be fact. Baudrillard’s hyperreality is a illusion. Another critique of Baudrillard is the fact that this idea of reality being an illusion just legitimizes violence. It makes suffering and structual violence just an “illusion”. Now this is just my thoughts on the subject, Evan.
References
[1]: Selected Writings; By: Jean Buadrillard
Titled: Palestine or Israel?
My Position
Okay so yesterday we talked about how Great Britian gained Palestine (Which also had Jordan). The combination of Palestine and Jordan was called the British Mandate of Palestine. So that is how this connects to the content learning. I also think this a rather important geopolitical issue.
So many Americans support Israel, but I don’t. The difference between me and many people who support Palestine is the fact that I don’t support Palestine because I like Palestine; I support Palestine, indirectly, because I don’t support Israel.
Why?
Well there are a few problems with Israel:
1. They are an ethno-state! The problem with ethno-states is two-fold. First, in the case of Israel, it gives legal privellege to the ethnic Jews in Israel, and disadvantages the ethnically Arab Palestinians. Here is what I mean by disadvantage: Jewish Nation-State Law; Israeli Apartheid. Now those two things only disadvantage Arab Israelis, not Palestinians. Second, Arab Israelis have it better than the Palestinians. The Palestinians don’t even have citizens status or any legal rights. Here is a common trend I see between Ethno-States: CAMPS (don’t worry I’m about to expand on this point).
*WOW* Ethno-States are rascist and take notes from the Nazis
So check this comparision out: Nazi Germany was a ethno-state of the Ayran people and the people they legally deamed inferior (the Jews), they put in camps and also kill (the Holocaust). Now, Israel is a ethno-state of the Jewish people and the people they legally deamed inferior (the Palestinians), they put in camps and also kill (Palestinian Killed by Israeli Soldiers, Gaza Concentration Camps, Human Rights Abuses, Nazi Comparision, More About Gaza Being A Concentration Camp, If you want more evidence just ask). So that is my main problem with Israel, it is a reactionary, rascist, imperialist state. Thanks, Evan.
Titled: Mike Bloomberg: it is Time to Stop
It’s time to stop! I’m going to break down why Mike Bloomberg shouldn’t be president. So let’s get started!
Part 1: Pedophilia
So I’m going to start out with a disclaimer: Mike is not a confirmed pedophile but there are little hints we can pick up on.
Mike and Jeffery Epstein
So, Mike Bloomberg was in Epstein’s black book of contacts if you don’t know what that is, check this out (Michael Bloomberg Was In Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book). So thats not good. Second, Mike has been in association with a very close associate of Jeffery Epstein (EVIDENCE). So again there isn’t to much substantial evidence on this but still, people one associates themselves with are usually a good reflection on that person (again usually).
Part 2: Racism
So Mike Bloomberg is racist. Now thats, not an ad hominem, he is an actual racist. Mike Bloomberg supported redlining, which is where you give preferential treatment to a certain ethnicity/race in terms of accessibility to financial assets. Next, let’s look at his massive expansion of the stop and frisk policy. He increased racial profiling leading to 7 times the regular amount of stops by police.
Part 3: Sexual Harassment and Sexism
Over 64 women have brought forward sexual harassment charges as well as charges of sexual discrimination against Mikey. Now now, not all charges are true but there are two things to this. 1. This is more charges alleged than were alleged against Trump. So just by that logic Trump>Bloomberg. 2. And this is the important one. He PAID women off and forced them to sign NDAs because the evidence was most likely damning for him. Finally, he was accused of telling a pregnant women to kill her baby
It’s time to stop, don’t vote for Mike Bloomberg!
Titled: It’s getting a little RED in here
The world post-WW1 was very radical. The fall of empires, the rise of democracies (and the subsequent rise of nationalism), so it was pretty crazy. But one thing that is swept under the rug in terms of the inter-war period is the rise of communism. So I’m going to start looking over the communist/socialist movements that took rise in these periods, as well as for the rest of this year. So to make a little precursor to this little ‘series’ let’s talk about the OG revolution: le Paris Commune. In 1871, working-class revolutionaries seized Paris, this was only possible because of how unstable France was due to the collapse of the Second French Empire the year before, as well as the Franco-Prussian War (Which France lost). So Paris was also not the capital of France during the Franco-Prussian War, instead, Tours was. So the Second French Empire, during the Franco-Prussian War, assigned National Guard troops to Paris. The problem with these National Guard troops they stationed in Paris was the fact they were highly politicized and radical in their political beliefs. So eventually Paris surrendered and Prussia disarmed the French Army, but since the National Guard wasn’t “official French military”, they were not disarmed. So when you have a disarmed army, a highly unstable nation, the fall of the current government, you’re in a war with the rising, as well as, almost dominant military power in the region, and the people who have guns are trained radicals, revolution is coming. So the National Guard started espousing their radical politics to the Paris workers and due to the previous espousal of these radical ideas i.e. the politics of the 1st Internationale, the workers of Paris were quick to join the cause. So Revolution ensued and in 1871 the newly established Third Republic of France put them down. But when looking at the Paris Commune is it a totalitarian state like that of the counter-revolutionary Stalin? Nah. They were actually, as I have dubbed it, one of the many examples of non-totalitarian successful socialism. They had the separation of the church and state, they outlawed child labor, remission of owed rents, gave pensions to the kids of killed national guardsmen, the free return of the means of production, postponement of debt, rights of the workers to take over and run the businesses together, they banned fines put on workers by their fellow workers (so one worker couldn’t just take control). So after that long list of great things, is that it? No! They were a democracy. They had elections. They had council elections, which is very similar to our (America’s) representative democracy but these where worker councils so basically the government was ‘for the worker, run by the worker, and for the worker’. So I’m going to look at more of these successes of socialism for the rest of the year. Hoped you learned something and also learned that my critical position of socialism being possible, isn’t baseless as it has worked. Thanks, Comrade Evan.
March
Titled: A REEEEEply to The Soviet Story (Part 1)
First, this is a very good article on debunking The Soviet Story: THE SOVIET STORY — The Tissue of Lies.
Second, I’m not a ML (Marxist-Leninist) or a Stalinist. I DO NOT support the U.S.S.R. but I’m going to go towards leftist unity.
The NKVD and Gestapo Documents
So the “document” that they cite to show that the NKVD and the Gestapo cooperated on the scale they implied was a fake. The movie calls this document “the General Agreement”. The document was supposedly signed on November 11th, 1938. It was again supposedly signed by H. Muller of the Gestapo. Now H. Muller did direct the Gestapo, but he wasn’t the Director of the Gestapo until September 27, 1939. So he couldn’t have signed the document. Also he was Berlin, summarizing the results of Kristallnacht, which took place on November 10th 1938. So he couldn’t have been in Moscow on November 11th, 1938. So he couldn’t have signed it. The person who apparently signed the document on the behalf of the Soviets, Chief of the NKVD secretariat Mamulov, didn’t assume that position until January 3rd, 1939. It is as if they didn’t even try.
The Photos of the “Victims of the Bolsheviks”
The film showcases many dead bodies, ripped up corpses, etc. etc. The film cites these as “victims of the Bolsheviks”. Many of these photos come from Nazi Propaganda made in 1941, and from a Anti-Semitic film called The Red Mist, made in 1942 by the Nazis. The Red Mist, was created by Nazis as anti-Bolshevik propaganda. But there is more. The book The Year of Horror was republished in 1997, and it has a lot of images that were used in the film. The problem with these photos is that they weren’t of atrocities done by the Soviets but instead were of atrocities done by Latvian Ultra-Nationalists who were collaborating with the Gestapo. The collections of documents called the Latvia Under the Yoke of Nazism, says that the Gestapo in fact commited these atrocities and passed them off as works of the Bolsheviks for propaganda purposes. The Latvian Directory was created by the Gestapo in 1941. This Directory created a special commisional group of 40 people who disfigured, maimed, etc. dead bodies found in mourges for propaganda purposes. To ensure that this wouldn’t get out, many of these 40 people were killed. Testominails confirm that major parts of The Red Mist film were fabricated for purposes of propaganda.
The Holodomor
Now, I’m NOT saying there was no famine in Ukraine but the pictures used to illustrate the Holodomor were actually pictures from the Russian Famine of 1921–1922. So we already have a dishonest start. Next, the movie says that Stalin planned th Holodomor but the opposite is true. Stalin wrote to Kaganovich on August 11, 1932 instead of the film’s date of September 11th, 1932. The letter gave instructions to replace the current leaders of the Ukrainian SFSR with leaders from the Russian SFSR. To further, Molotov cut back the required amount of grain from Ukraine by 70,000,000 poods which is around 1,120,000 US tonnes. The Soviet Story claims that 10 million tonnes grain were exported from Ukraine in 1932–1933. But this isn’t even true
About 1.8 million tonnes of grain were exported in 1932 and 1.76 to 1.77 million tonnes in 1933. Next the film claims that about 7 million died in the famine. When we look at the actual declassified Soviet Statistics we see that in 1932–1933 there were 2.518 million deaths. This previous number includes natural deaths. So lets even high ball the death toll and add a million. 3.5 million deaths is still half of what the movie alleges.
Next, the movie says that this was an act of genocide. But genocide implies intent. Listen… Stalin didn’t use his weather powers to will a famine in Ukraine. AGAIN, there was a famine in Ukraine. But if it was an attempt at genocide the Soviets wouldn’t have sent support to the region. But in 1933 the Soviets sent 501,000 tonnes of grain to Ukraine as support. All regions (excluding some of Kazakhstan) recived 990,000 tonnes of grain. I find this really really fuuny (not the famine) as a lot of people on the right side of the political spectrum say this was an act of genocide. The reason I find this funny is because the people who espouse this lie also espouse the motto of ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’. So let’s use some logic. If the Soviets wanted to genocide the Ukranian population why would they send aid in the form of 1.1 million tonnes of grain and other supplies of food.
Titled: A REEEEEsponse to The Soviet Story (Part 2 Electric Boogaloo)
Repression in the Soviet Union
The movie next says that from 1937 to 1941, over 11 million people were repressed by the NKVD of the Soviet Union. 1,486,676 (not including acquittals), 1,534,616 (including acquittals) people were repressed by the NKVD from 1937–1940. 796,613 in 1937, 558,583 in 1938, 92,202 in 1939, and 87,218 in 1940. All of these past numbers, including the total, count acquittals. In 1941, 209,015 people faced charges from the NKVD, not all of them were convicted but to be generous to political right lets include them. So including Acquittals, people that weren’t even convicted 1,743,631 people were repressed by the NKVD from 1937–1941. Including the Koreans repressed because of the Soviet-Japanese border clashes in 1939, as well as the Poles from the 1939 annexation, we can raise that number up to 2.3 million and incase there were people unaccounted for lets add another 100,000 buting the number up to 2.4 million. Which is still horrible but far from 11 million.
Stalin liked Hitler
So the Soviet Story claims that Stalin was against the idea of a anti-Hitler coalition. The problem with this is the fact that in 1935 the U.S.S.R., France, and Czechoslovakia all signed a mutual aid treaty. This was called the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance and the Czechoslovak-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance. The problem was that Czechoslovakia could only be defended by the Soviets if the French also defended them. But as we know, the Munich Agreement happened and Czechoslovakia was annexed. The Soviet Union even had the idea of an anti-Hitler collective security system but that was rejected by the French and British. On April 16th, 1939 proposed an pact of mutual aid between France, Britian, and the U.S.S.R. but this was rejected. So it kinda sounds like the Allies (excluding the USA) were the ones who allowed Hitlers unchecked rise.
Misinformation
Now the article which I pointed to: THE SOVIET STORY — The Tissue of Lies isn’t always correct. And again I want to express the fact that I checked each of the things the former article talks about. I want to STRESS the fact that the information about the Latvian Bodies was produced by the FSB of Russia, so if you want take it with a grain of salt. But at the same time the basis of the Latvian bodies was produced by the Nazis so chose who you would like to believe.
The Gulags
So when talking about the gulags the article talked about in the last section was just flat out wrong. But there is some common misinformation about the gulags. First the Gulags were just prisons. People that went there had an average sentence of 10 years. A total 18 million people passed through the gulags. Again for the entirety of the existence of gulags only 18 million people went through them. 1.6 million people died in the gulags. “But” I hear you say, “gulags were labor camps, Evan!!!11!!!!11!!!”, I say to this “yuh”. Gulags were labor camps. I’m not a historical revisionist. But the problem with specifically Right-Wing/Anti-Communist Americans hyping up the issue of gulags is in short…. “check yourself before you wreck yourself”. Now, what do I mean by this? Well… Let’s first look at the 13th amendment. Here is the direct text: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. So what am I getting at? Well let’s have another look. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. Slavery in the United States of America is unironically practiced within the prison industrial complex. Now, Evan what is this so called Prison Industrial Complex? Here is the formal defenition:
“The term ‘prison–industrial complex’ (PIC), derived from the ‘military–industrial complex’ of the 1950s describes the attribution of the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit¨.
So why do I bring this up? Well there is a reason the number of prisons/incarcerations are both increasing. It is capitalism *wow*. But that is for another time. The non-Marxist lens will help give a broader picture. The reason these two things are increasing is because of free slave labor. If you don’t believe me here are a few articles on it: Corporations Go to Prisons: The Expansion of Corporate Power in the Correctional Industry, The disgrace of America’s prison-industrial complex, If We Build It They Will Come: Human Rights Violations and the Prison Industrial Complex, Working in Prison: Time as Experienced by Inmate-Workers, and here is a music video on it as well: Killer Mike — “Reagan” (Official Music Video) (defenitally look into the deeper meaning in that song, and if you can figure it out, I’ll explain. The US government dispersed cocaine and other various drugs among the black urban population in so that they could convict, imprison, and then subsequently exploit free (essentially) slave labor from them. You can see this being hightened during the War on Drugs). Now I must stress THE GULAGS WERE AWFUL! I don’t think prisons in any of the current/past forms they have taken are a good thing, and even then prison are still a shakey subject as I don’t really believe in such authoritarianism. The gulags just like the US PIC are both symptomatic of capitalism and the ruling class’s (le bourgeoisie’s) desire for exploitation of the working class’s (le proletariat’s) labor.
Titled: On Marxism (A REEEEEtort to The Soviet Story (Part 3))
On Anti-Semitism
So the movie largely portrays Marxism to be symptomatic of anti-semitism. But is this the case? No.
“Marx, an atheist descendent of a line of Rabbis and Jews, forcefully rebutted Bauer. Marx historicized the distinctive social and economic position of Jews in Europe to show that the entire convoluted debate in Bauer’s conception of the “Jewish question” was misplaced and lacked a class politics that considered how religious groups are transformed differentially by the emergence of capitalism. The claim that Marx’s essay is anti-Semitic not only lacks historical sensibility (the concept did not yet exist) but also misses the crucial point that Marx wrote, pace Bauer, in defense of civil rights for Jews” (Nir and Wainwright) [1].
So let’s disect that quote. First, Marx was ethnically jewish. Second, Marx directly responded to Bauer’s book The Jewish Question. Third, Marx actively wrote in defense of the rights of the Jews. So the movie isn’t starting on the best footing for the third time in a row.
On Violence
So the movie talks about this great violence that is natural to Marxism. It speaks about how Marxism “advocates” for the “mass killing” of the ruling elite (i.e. le bourgeoisie). So the question is: why would they think this? Well, I think they do two things wrong. 1. They represent the supposed killings to be quite large, when in fact the bourgeoisie isn’t this large group. I’m guessing the producers believe that the middle class and even some of the high class are apart of the bourgeoisie when in fact they are proletarians as well. 2. I don’t think the producers understand what they are even saying. What I mean by this is the simple fact that revolutionary violence is kinda key.
So this picture above is Marx’s Theory of History, the Dialectic, and what we can see from this is that we are currently in Bourgeois Democracy. So how did we get to democracy? Well, through mass violence [insert French Revolution guillotine joke here]. So saying the oppressed lower class shouldn’t use violence to rise up against their oppressors is firstly, legitimizing violence, and secondly, nonsensical. So yes we should have a violent revolution if needed. To quote (L)Mao Zedong, “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
On the Revolutionary Holocaust
So the movie claims that Daddy Marx called for an Revolutionary Holocaust. This is not true. The movie says Marx said this “Classes and races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way… They must “disappear in the revolutionary Holocaust”. They give no source for this but alas I am a salty lefty with too much time on my hands so I found it, but something is wierd. It is as if they misspelled a few words (those being revolutionary holocaust). Here is the quote:
“The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords? In Great Britain the working of that process is most transparent. The application of modern science to production clears the land of its inhabitants, but it concentrates people in manufacturing towns.” (Marx) [2].
You may say to this: “Evan, you are citing Marxists.org!!!!11!!!11!!11!!1!!! They could have changed it!” Well, they could have, but even then Holocaust means “a burnt offering to god”. It also was barely even used during Marx’s day.
You may have issue with Marx saying ‘must give way’, but this is in refernce to the transition to capitalism. He is speaking of those who can not handle the transition to capitalism in terms of production power, as well as transitional disasters, for example famine, which come with the transition. He is not talking about the transition to socialism.
On Völkerabfälle
So the movie claims that Papi Marx said “Völkerabfälle or racial trash”. First, he did not say this. Frederick Engels said Völkerabfälle. Second, the movie disgustingly misrepresents what Völkerabfälle means.
The movie has even gained criticism/controversy from it.
References and a Fun Little Picture:
[1]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08935696.2018.1525965?journalCode=rrmx20
[2]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm
Titled: It SaYs It In ThE nAmE (A REEEEEpartee to The Soviet Story (Part 4))
Foreword
So this is my final large REEEEE[insert suffix of a word that starts with re and is an synonym of reply/response/retort/repartee here] to The Soviet Story, but don’t you worry! Since, we are talking about Fascism and Marxism in class, and we are approaching WW2 get ready for some more in depth political JOLLIES. Now let’s get on with it comrades!
On Nazism
So the political right LOVES to frame Nazism as socialism because… well… it is in the name: national SOCIALISM. Using this logic North Korea is a democracy, as it is in the name the DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea. So this logic is wrong. But lets look into policy. Hitler upheld private property, he had an extremely RIGHT wing view of economic darwinism, he continued individual entrepreneurship, market competition. To further, Hitler prevent wages from increasing, and banned all trade unions. To further, on July 4, 1930 an article was published. This article was called The Socialists Leace the NSDAP! (Go read it). So we can see, from an unbaised perspective, no genocide had happend, and this is from an ex-party member, Otto Strasser, that they weren’t socialist. But let’s say you still don’t believe me. Well, after Hitler took power he literaly arrested every socialist, communist, lefty, etc. etc.
“In the months after Hitler took power, SA and Gestapo agents went from door to door looking for Hitler’s enemies. They arrested Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi Party; some were murdered. By the summer of 1933, the Nazi Party was the only legal political party in Germany. Nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany” [1].
Let’s look at some more facts:
*WOW* The rate of return on capital increased under Nazi leadership? It is almost as if they weren’t socialist? Oh wait… they weren’t.
Here are some more graphs:
For an amazing explanation on the graphs go read this article: Capitalism and Nazism. Top indepth analysis is done by the great economist Suresh Naidu, as well as Corey Robin.
Here is another GREAT quote on this subject:
“By the late 1920s, however, with the German economy in free fall, Hitler had enlisted support from wealthy industrialists who sought to pursue avowedly anti-socialist policies. Otto Strasser soon recognized that the Nazis were neither a party of socialists nor a party of workers, and in 1930 he broke away to form the anti-capitalist Schwarze Front (Black Front). Gregor remained the head of the left wing of the Nazi Party, but the lot for the ideological soul of the party had been cast. Hitler allied himself with leaders of German conservative and nationalist movements, and in January 1933 German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him chancellor. Hitler’s Third Reich had been born, and it was entirely fascist in character. Within two months Hitler achieved full dictatorial power through the Enabling Act. In April 1933 communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews were purged from the German civil service, and trade unions were outlawed the following month. That July Hitler banned all political parties other than his own, and prominent members of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. Lest there be any remaining questions about the political character of the Nazi revolution, Hitler ordered the murder of Gregor Strasser, an act that was carried out on June 30, 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives. Any remaining traces of socialist thought in the Nazi Party had been extinguished” [2].
Here is another good article on the subject as well: Adolf Hitler was not a socialist
To further this idea that the Nazis weren’t socialists. Let’s look at their economic policy. The Nazi economic policy was called dirigisme or dirigism. This is were the state plays a large role in the direction of the economy. It also, for purposes of national autarky, stresses a large role for the state in the management of resources. So after doing a little research and digging, I found out that dirigism was based on Colbertian Mercantilism and is an more “futurist” or rather advanced form of it (advanced is much better than futurist). Jean-Babtiste Colbert wanted protectionism, and for the government to take an interventionist role in the economy. So no, the nazis did not have a socialist economy, rather it was an dirigist one. But what would I call dirigism? Well, I would call it Dirigism but I’m sure many people would call it socialist because the state is involved, but this is just ignorant.
To quote the Aquarian Agarian, “The mere presence of a government, or public services, or a welfare state, or unions, does not make a system socialist. Supporting the rights of only ethnic Germans, and providing public services to solely or mostly them, is certainly not what Marx meant by ‘workers of the world unite’” [3].
The problem with believing the idea that the Nazi’s economic policy was that of socialism is the fact that one will most likely have a right-wing bias when coming into the situtation. I would know because I used to have this bias. I think it is just really reflective of myself that I bought into all of that trash. “Facts don’t care about your feelings”, PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, etc. but what I failed to realize was that the right predicates itself on feelings. It predicates itself on subjective morals, values, identities. To be honest, my political move to the left was the first time I felt objectivity in the form of class analysis, or in the form of Stirner’s ego, or in the form of “iDeOlOgY”, but I digress.
The whole goal of Nazi Germany’s economic policies was Autarky, i.e. economic independence, as well as resource sufficiency for the entirety of the nation. So they used protectionist tarrifs to benefit domestic industry, which is exactly what many capitalist countries do today. The Nazis practiced “Dirigist Mercantilism”, in the words of the Aquarian Agrarian.
To further this idea that statism and socialism are not the same things, Aquarian Agrarian says,
“Anyone who believes that a state is what makes something socialist, probably also believes that, as the meme says, ‘socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff it does, the more socialister it is’. A state is a political arrangement, while socialism is an economic system. Statism and socialism are not the same thing… A big welfare state is not what socialists want. They want robust and diverse union activity, transitions to worker management of workplaces, and sustainable growth of community-oriented cooperative nonprofit enterprises, where those who labor retain the freedom to keep all of what they earn, with full rights to adjudge (within reason) what is the full product of their labor, and what form of compensation would suffice as its equivalent (cough, labor, cough cough)… Socialists don’t support welfarism, they support socialism; the freedom of workers to keep what they make and earn, so that they never need to go on welfare, or establish a welfare state. It’s neoliberals who want a welfare state, while the progressives (who often depend on it) feel conflicted, and know something about it isn’t working right… Socialism’s goal is stateless communism, and there are plenty of anarchist and anti-authoritarian currents within socialism. Being in control of a state does not make you a socialist, because socialism is an economic system; just like market-oriented economics, it comes with no guarantee of either statism or freedom”.
Rekt… nuff said…
But to give my analysis on the quote. I do disagree with the notion that being statist also means socialist. I really think this misconception stems from two things: 1. Political Spectrums and Representation. What I mean by this is the fact that many political compasses show the right economic axis as getting more economically free the further right you go, whereas the more economically left you go the more economically authoritarian you get. But this is just wrong. The more economically right you go the more economic emphasis there is on competition, whereas the more economically left you go the more economic emphasis there is on cooperation. 2. The exclusion of the libertarian left. The anarchist left, the libertarian left, etc. etc. are oftenly excluded from any right wing analysis. I think this is soley because of how scared the political right can get when they can just yell “Muh Soviet Union Killed People”. Because most an-coms, libertarian marxists, left-coms, dem-confeds, aren’t as nonsensical as as the auth left.
The last conceivable argument I can faintly hear the political right make after I pointed out Hitler’s political, ideological, economic motivations (those all being non-socialist), the social policy of the NSDAP (that being non-socialist), the fact that the socialists literally left the party of the NSDAP on July 4th, 1930, the economic policy of the NSDAP (that being dirigism, not socialism), the fact that statism doesn’t equal socialism, how a welfare state doesn’t mean socialism, or just welfarism doesn’t mean socialism, and lastly how capital was aided by the Nazi regime; all I can faintly hear is that the nazis were collectivist and therefore socialists.
To use the definition of Collectivism as defined by the Aquarian Agrarian:
“Collectivism can be defined as either public or state ownership of the means of production, or as a moral worldview that supports giving groups precedence over individuals. The definition of collectivism does not perfectly overlap with the definition of socialism, and the use of the word ‘collectivism’ may not always denote an economic system”.
Now it is very important to point out that last part. The reason we consider the nazis to be collectivists is because of state power as well as ultra-nationalist organization. There was this “collectivist societial ethos”, where the aspiration of the German society was to serve the German state. Now this is in no way symptomatic of socialism which is a form of economic organization.
To once again quote the Aquarian Agrarian, “
Nazism and socialism are both forms of collectivism, but they’re collectivist in different ways. Nazis believe that the collective, and society, are best embodied in the nation, the state, and the segment of society with the right ethnicity and the superior blood and genetics. Socialists see the collective, and society, as the totality of peoples and lands of the world. Marx said “workers of the world, unite”, not “pure-blooded workers of the greater German-speaking realm, unite!”. The Communist Manifesto calls for anarcho-communism through cooperation across borders and nations; a society without states, class divisions, nor currency. Additionally, not all forms of socialism are collectivist through-and-through… there are socialists, and types of socialism, that are very individualistic, or free market, or patriotic, or even (as I’ve explained) nationalist… Max Stirner… Austromarxist Otto Bauer… Emma Goldman… Benjamin Tucker… Lysander Spooner. Henry George, and mutualist Pierre-Joesph Proudhon… Sophie Scholl… and well-known critic of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt”.
“To believe that Nazis were socialists is to believe that all socialists are evil authoritarians. If we want people to be properly educated, this will not do” — Joseph W. Kopsick, September 30, 2017.
Also I just found this article right before I posted this and it made the same analogy about North Korea and Democracy: Putting The “Nazis Were Socialist” Nonsense To Rest
Oh its also funny how people on the right say that Nazism isn’t nationalist but then say they are socialist because its in the name.
References:
[1]: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-terror-begins
[2]: https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-the-new-year-start-on-january-1
[3]: http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/09/debunking-top-six-claims-that-nazis.html
April
Titled: A Marxist Critique of Capitalism and its Tools
By: Evan Jack
Notes
Table of Contents (I’m not finishing this table of contents)
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Pg.1
- Prelude……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Pg.1
Part I: The Critique………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Pg.1
- Part 1 of the Critique: Violence and Division…………………………………………………………….Pg.1
- Part A: Violence……………………………………………………………………………………………..Pg.1
- Part B: Division of the Proletariat through Identity Politics………………………………Pg.1
- Part C: Division of the Proletariat through issues of Animal Liberation and Post-humanism……………………………………………………………………………………………………….Pg.1
- Part D: Division of the Proletariat through Biopolitics (and Agamben)……………..Pg.1
- Part 2 of the Critique: Ideologies infected by Capitalism……………………………………………Pg.1
- Part A: A Marxist Critique of Deleuze and Guattari…………………………………………Pg.1
- Part B: A Marxist Critique of Baudrillard……………………………………………………….Pg.1
- Part C: A Marxist Critique of Nietzsche…………………………………………………………..Pg.1
- Part D: A Marxist Critique of Giroux and the Post-9/11 Left…………………………….Pg.1
- Part E: A Marxist Critique of Foucault……………………………………………………………Pg.1
- Part F: A Marxist Critique of Heidegger (and Nazism)……………………………………..Pg.1
- Part G: A Marxist Critique of Bataille……………………………………………………………..Pg.1
References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Pg.1
Introduction
Prelude
The goal of this critique is to ultimately dismantle the oppressive system that is Capitalism. I do not care if this JOLLIE is too long, being too lazy to read a long JOLLIE does not invalidate the knowledge explained and written about in a JOLLIE. I will do a lot of things in this JOLLIE, but here is a brief overview: I will critique capitalism, the philosophies infected by capitalism, the movements the perpetuate capitalism, the ideologies the perpetuate capitalism, and other things that perpetuate capitalism. I will answer counter-arguments in the comments
Part I: The Critique
Part 1 of the Critique: Violence, Division, and Perpetuation
Part A: Violence
The main thing that made me leave capitalism behind, and unassociated myself with other capitalists, is one thing: capitalism sustains itself on violence. The Bourgeoisie suppresses, divides, demeans, and imposes violence on every new generation that goes through the industrial death machine known as capitalism. We are indoctrinated to believe there is no alternative. If you can not compete with others that sucks, they tell us to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps. Individual stories of success are told to indoctrinate the current as well as the rising generation that “you can do it too”, “you can be self-made”, “you can rise to the top”. Through indoctrination they make us believe capital is innate to the human condition, even though it has only occupied the past few centuries of history. The Bourgeoisie step on the heads of the Proletariat and fetishize capitalism and the violence it produces to the point, we believe it is natural, “the way things go”, some even believe it is good [1].
Part B: Division of the Proletariat through Identity Politics
The Proletariat is not unified. We are constantly divided by the Bourgeoisie. But with what do the Bourgeoisie divide us with? Well, it is simple, through new forms of identity and classification. Race, gender and sex, ability, sexuality, “age”, etc. are “created” to divide the Proletariat. Now I do need to clarify a few things. First on race: race, ethnicity, and racism were all borne out of capital to justify the inequality between white settlers and black slaves (and other slaves like the Chinese and Irish) [2]. Race is also just a tool to further divide the Proletariat. Examples of Proletarian division through race are, race war instead of class war, critical black theory instead of critical Marxist theory, and just the concept of race, in it of itself, divides the Proletariat. The argument isn’t that race isn’t real, instead, the argument is we should focus on class rather than any other form of identity/classification. Second on gender: first, gender and sex are different things. Gender is how one is socially identified or socially identifies themselves, in terms of the associated characteristics and attributes of the two sexes. Sex is the biological classification of a person, per the genitalia they were born with. Now that I have cleared that up, let’s talk about gender and sex. When looking at gender inequality, we again see the infection of bourgeois knowledge. Feminists often use the abstract concept of patriarchy to explain gender inequality. The problem with this logic is it mystifies and obscures the lines between capital, gender/sex, and labor. The creation of labor division based on sex is a product of capitalism’s drive for efficiency, it is not an ahistorical product of patriarchy [3]. To further, the social relations of production are what further perpetuate gender violence [4]. Feminists, by saying an abstract system of patriarchy is the root cause of gender violence, are further obscuring and covering over the real root cause: capitalism, and in doing so further perpetuate gender violence. Focusing on gender and sex is diverting our attention away from class issues, and it further divides the Proletariat as well. Even then capitalism created and perpetuates what feminists call patriarchy. This is for people who think Marxism can’t sovle for heteropatriarchy:
Third on ability: issues of ability, disability, and ableism are all products of capitalism. Capitalism excludes people with disabilities from the workforce. It is the very logic of capital to produce for profit, so when workers have issues they need individual attention for, they are rejected from the workforce. This is how capitalism further perpetuates ableism [5]. Before capitalism, people with disabilities were not excluded from the workforce [6]. Fourth on sexuality: Queer, as well as Trans violence, are both products of capitalism. The problem with focusing on issues of sexuality is because through fetishizing those issues, it commodifies them, which in turn re-entrenches capitalism. Capitalism and production depend on heteronormativity. People who are apart of the LGBTQIA+ movement, by not focusing on capitalism, prevent the Proletariat from achieving liberation and ultimately prevent the end of queer violence [7]. When looking closer at trans issues, we can see the same trend. The material conditions of capitalism are what entrench ideas of heteronormativity and the nuclear family. We can not solve for queer and trans issues until we dismantle capitalism [8]. Fifth on age: Now I’m going to clarify, I DO NOT MEAN AGE ISN’T REAL! Ideas like love is love, regardless of age, are abhorrent and only lead to violence and abuse. I am talking about how the Proletariat is exploited, expended, and then exposed of, due to age. The elderly, once their use for production through labor is lost due to age, are exposed of, thrown in the trash, etc. [9]. Capitalism also uses ageism to divide the Proletariat [10]. We can see the further division of the Proletariat through issues in age; examples of this are generation war instead of class war, the okay boomer meme, etc [11]. The thing is we only have one identity: Proletariat [12].
Part C: Division of the Proletariat through issues of Animal Liberation and Post-humanism
Another thing that diverts attention from class issues, is animal/post-human issues. Many people believe the crises of our time are issues of animal exploitation. The problem with this is it misses two big things: 1. the root cause of animal exploitation is capitalism (*wow* I’m shocked). 2. animal liberations, as well as post-human movements, only serve capitalism. First, when looking at the increase in “ethical” consumption i.e. not buying products in which animals are harmed, we can see a new form of capitalism: capitalism with a “human face”. Veganism and ethical consumption cannot solve for abuse and exploitation. Through ethical consumption and veganism, capitalism is just adapting and adjusting to a modern progressive society. The problem is capitalism will inevitably adjust to veganism and then the movement for ethical consumption will end, this will strengthen capitalism, as it now has more defense in terms of “animal ethics”. Second, on the movements. Animal Liberation, as well as Post-Humanist movements, only divert attention away from the Human-Human relationship in terms of the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat and towards the Animal-Human relationship [13].
Part D: Division of the Proletariat through Biopolitics and a Marxist Critique of Agamben
Biopolitics is the politics of life. Biopolitics focuses on life. The only production it focuses on is the production of life. This is the problem with biopolitics, it soley focuses on life. Class is disregarded. When using a framework of biopolitics, it is impossible to look at the struggles that take place within life. The problem with Agamben’s biopolitics is the fact that when looking at life, he doesn’t look at capital. He doesn’t even look at how biotechnology affects captial, labor, or even value. Agamben can’t analyze life without looking at how capital affects life [14].
Part 2 of the Critique: Ideologies infected by Capitalism
Part A: A Marxist Critique of Deleuze and Guattari
The problem is Capitalism has adapted. It has adapted to Deleuze: Deleuzian Capitalism. The goal of schzioanalyisis and rhizomatic sociology was to be anti-systemic. The problem with this goal is the fact that Capitalism loves anti-systematic movements, it thrives off them. The hope of D and G for schzioanalyisis was to help free the schziod few. It was supposed to be a form psuedo-gueraila warfare for the schzoids, but Capitalism is master of consumption. Capitalism has consumed D and G’s critique of Capitalism, and with this consumption, Capitalism has adjusted and is stronger [15]. The next problem is D & G can’t escape capitalism. Capitalism just turns their theories into a new area of competition [16].
Part B: A Marxist Critique of Baudrillard
Baudrillard was wrong on a few things: 1. He is wrong that needs are a series of codes, signifiers, lines which transcend space and fly everywhere. He is wrong when he says these codes, signfiers, lines, etc. are just random and go into nothingness. 2. He is wrong when he signifies because we can’t know truth we should abandon truth [17]. Now I will get back to what he is wrong on in just a second, but lets look at his attack on Marxism. Baudrillard critiques what he calls the ‘Marxist incapablity of historical explanation’, what he means by this is that Marxism can’t explain pre-capitalist societies. Buadrillard creates a third form of exchange: symbolic exchange. The exchange being in the form of signals, signs, lines, symbols, etc [18]. The problem with Baudrillard’s idea that Marx can’t explain pre-capitalist societes is that Marx can and does explain them. Marx sees history as a collection of the historical modes of production. He uses the historical modes of production to explain past societies, and he analyzes them through production. This is what makes Marx’s theory of production so totalizing or as Baudrillard puts it ‘universalism’. Then Baudrillard with his third form of exchange: symbolic exchange, says that it affects all exchange-value transactions, which of course because symbolic exchange is well symbolic, he has no empirical evidence of. This is what makes his semiotic concepts just wrong as well as problematic. He gives no justification for why we should use them to explain all stages of human society [19]. Marx’s does give justification in Das Kapital. Here is a Diagram of Marx’s Theory of History:
Back to point one, the reason this is incorrect is because he gives no justification for why semoitic concepts can explain modern/pre-modern or rather just non post-modern societies. On point two, Baudrillard, like other post-modern philosophers, have followed Nietzsche in abonding truth [20]. Which would perfectly lead to the next philosopher to be critiqued: Nietzsche, but before we look at Nietzsche, lets further look, as well as, critique Baudrillard. Baudrillard changes the binary of resistance. Marx and Engels’ binary of resistance was between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, and their mode of resistance was through organization and siezure of the means of production. Baudrillard changes this up. He makes the binary of resistance rather simple, it is between the simulacrum, which are replacments of reality with their representations, and the critical revolutionary, critical refering to critical post-modern theory. Baudrillard replaces the modes of resistance with “organization within simulated signifying practices”, as Katz puts it [21]. This conclusion of Baudrillard preputates the idea that knowledge and information are above labor. This idea of knowledge being above labor is wrong and just puts emphasence on representaion instead of production. What this does is it allows capital is subverse the left and basically attack it from the inside [22]. Adam Katz aBsOluTlEy DeStRoYs Baudrillard, in the following quote:
“as described by Baudrillard… The code would… be two-sided: On the one side, it governs by simulacra; on the other, it requires the responses and resistances of the masses it organizes and obliterates… the total system described by Baudrillard takes the form of the access of subjects to the code, their appropriation of it, and their ability to put it to use… These… subjects… reproduces a moral center… that is not all that different from the one problematized by postmodernity. Thus, the mode of resistance offered by Baudrillard actually provides the dominant order with the resources needed to reproduce its simulated models, and these resources are the autonomous activities of the simulated subjects themselves” (Katz) [23].
If you think I’m misrepresenting the quote because I did the … so many times, here it is, untouched: “The question of the relation between hyperreality and the reality it posits can also be addressed by raising the issue of where the code acquires the resources for its own reproduction. Either it contains within itself the capacity for infinite recombination (which would contradict both its need for external materials and its actually fairly limited repertoire, as described by Baudrillard) or it requires the very simulations of its logic, for which it also provides the model. The code would then be two-sided: On the one side, it governs by simulacra; on the other, it requires the responses and resistances of the masses it organizes and obliterates. In this latter case, then, the total system described by Baudrillard takes the form of the access of subjects to the code, their appropriation of it, and their ability to put it to use — that is, it requires precisely the kind of resistance prescribed by Baudrillard. These are subjects who are able to recognize the reality of their understanding of the unreality of their simulated understandings, which, in the end, reproduces a moral center (supported not through seriousness but through parody and sensationalization) that is not all that different from the one problematized by postmodernity. Thus, the mode of resistance offered by Baudrillard actually provides the dominant order with the resources needed to reproduce its simulated models, and these resources are the autonomous activities of the simulated subjects themselves” (Katz).
Another problem is the fact that simulacra, education, the media, technology, knowledge, information, etc. have all been comidified or are being comidified by capitalism [24]. The next problem that Baudrillard and many other post-modern theorist have is that they engage in micro-politics instead of macro-politics. The problem with this is micro-politics is based on subjectivity, identity, and ideas of transformation in a social sense, whereas, macro-politics are based on class, objectivity, and ideas of proletarian transformation [25]. Finally, we’re going to look at Baudrillard’s ideas of death. Baudrillard believes that contempary “Western Society” (i.e white society) is based on the exclusion of death. 1. Capitalism replaces, what Baudrillard calls “symbolic exchange”, with market exchange. 2. Capitalism is the root cause of contempary “Western Society’s” exclusion of death. 3. This leaves Baudrillard’s idea of radical reversal without a rootcause as well as justification [26]. With that I’m going to move on to Nietzsche.
Part C: A Marxist Critique of Nietzsche
Nietzsche’s idea that there is no good or evil is problematic and extremely reactionary. What does Nietzsche’s idea that there is no good or evil do? Well, it legitimzes violence *wow*. The will to power, to Nietzsche, is the “driving force” of humanity to use power in order to achieve or rather transcend into the Ubersmench, or Superman. Without “evil” or rather an overarching sense of “bad”, then there can be no organization against the Bourgeoisie. Why? Well, it is simple: since, to Nietzsche, there is no evil, then why should we care? What Nietzsche’s thinking does is it legitimizes a sort of “political nihilism” [27]. What this political nihilism does is it kills ideas of proletarian organization, revolution, etc.
Part D: A Marxist Critique of Giroux and the Post-9/11 Left
Giroux and the Post-9/11 Left have made a mistake. This mistake rests in class. Now class, to me and other orthodox Marxists (not that I am one, I’m still unsure on my specific political affilation), is what defines people, it is inherent to being a human, etc., a further defention of class would be, the structural differences of labor, capital, etc. at the point of production. The problem is the Post-9/11 Left as well as Giroux have changed this up a bit. They “commodify” class into a lifestyle, or rather a culture. With Giroux the reason for this is rather easy to identify as he loves his cultural politics. They (Giroux and the Post-9/11 Left) also change the point of resistance. They change the point/site of resistance to culture. A good way to explain this is the idea that Giroux and the Post-9/11 Left dont have a problem with you consuming products, they are more anti-corpratist than anti-capitalist. This is the main problem with them: they DONT have a problem with capitalism [28].
Part E: A Marxist Critique of Foucault
Foucault has this centeral idea of power and resistance being cyclical or rather “symbiotic”, one generates the other. Here is a quote from Slavoj Zizek, the most dangerous philosopher in the west (as some have dubbed him),
“The problem here is that, after insisting that the disciplinary power mechanisms produce the very object on which they exert their force (the subject is not only that which is oppressed by the power but emerges himself as the product of this oppression) — The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection [assujettissernene] much more profound than himself… himself, who is fully his own master (and thus loses the right to resist, since he cannot resist himself. . .). On this level, Power and Resistance are effectively caught in a deadly mutual embrace: there is no Power without Resistance (in order to function, Power needs an X which eludes its grasp); there is no Resistance without Power” (Zizek).
The problem with the thinking of Foucault is that their can’t be an excess of resistance, that there can never be more resistance than power, or vice versa. What this mentality implies is that resistance is futile. “Since you can never beat the system; why try?”. This another form of “political nihilism”, though it is different from Nietzsche’s. This also crowds out the idea of transformative politics, and ultimately prevents the possibility of liberation of the Proletariat [29].
Part F: A Marxist Critique of Heidegger and Nazism
First, Heidegger was a nazi (national socialist). Why is this bad? Well… [insert the Holocaust, Ayran Supremacy, Concentration Camps, the general animosity against the radical left, the reactionary ideology itselft, anti-semetism, and war crimes] (Nazism is bad). Nazism is also anthetical to communism as the working class serves the state, as well as, the fact Hitler, as well as other founder/infulencers on the nazi ideology, designed nazism to stop the working from having class conflict and they kill the idea of class struggle. Second, let’s not use an “ad hominem” attack and lets look at his ideology by itself. Heidegger’s ideology is heavily influnced by his love of “machine-thinking”. Because of his love of “machine-thinking”, he rejects the working class. To further the fact that his ideology has been infected with bourgeois logic as well as capital, we can see that he defends the idea of private property. Now I’m about to make a rather IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER/NOTE: private property and personal property are different. The communists DO NOT want to take your toothbrush, or any other personal items you may own. Yes, this means when the ScArY Democratic Socialist take over, hopefully Bernie wins in 2020, you will keep your car and your house. Private Property is better known as the means of production. A factory is private property, property owned by private corporations is private property. For Heidegger it is not the property relations of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, where the former has control of the means of production/private property, and the latter has nothing; that . Heidegger sees machines, not the property relations, as the cause for the Proletariat’s loss of their individuality and individual freedoms. Unlike property relations, where there is a binary the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, there is only manchines to Heidegger, not a binary between the Proletariat and machines, it is just machines. Heidegger doesn’t look at the change in the material relations that Marx outlines. Instead he says that the idea of Marxists talking about the abosolute that is the materiality that is the everyday reality, is just a method of hiding. As Kimberly DeFazio puts it, “the hammer is material not because of the qualities of its ‘thingness’… but because of the abstract social relations which both produce it and which determine its applications and its “meanings.” In the guise of putting forward a new notion of the (immaterial) ‘material,’ Heidegger’s argument is a means of dismantling the concepts needed for materialist explanation of the world” (DeFazio). Heidegger’s focus on the experience of labor rather than how material conditions determine labor diverts attention from the Historical MATERIALIST approach. This diversion kills the ability of the Proletariat to organize, identify enemies, as well as, identify ahistorical products that are ideologies infected with the logic of capital [30].
Part G: A Marxist Critique of Bataille
Capitalism is not rational, calculated, etc. it is rather “undecided play”, as Goux puts it. Bataille’s critique of capitalism involves a critique of the rationale of capital, a critique of the invisible hand of the market if you will. The problem is the fact that as stated above, Capitalism is “undecided play” (Goux). Bataille didn’t take into the fact that Capitalism is ever-changing and ever-evolving. The change of capitalism was so radical in terms of post-industrialism. Luxury, comfort, unneeded/unproductive consumption was such a radical shift in capitalism. This radical shift in production is what makes Bataille’s theories, unable to contest capitalism and two useless to the education of the Proletariat [31]. Bataille makes another crucial error, he disregards money’s role in the capitalist economy. Bataille articulates that money is a form of energy. What he doesn’t acknowledge is the fact that because of money’s position in the political economy, the unlimited accumulation of wealth is possible. Bataille, because of this, makes it impossible to distinugsh betwwen exchange-value and use-value. Lastly, he doesn’t share Marx’s theory of labor value, but instead, believes in the more neo-classical distinction of value being defined by desire. He makes the political economy apolitical, and in doing so, makes it impossible to derive revolutionary education from Marx [32].
Part H: A Marxist Critique of Derrida, Social Justice, and Striner
Derrida and his philosophies are pseudo-apologies for capitalism. The philosophy he puts foward is similar to that of Striner i.e. a philosophy of the accelerating bourgeois ego. Derrida, to try to solve for international and global social injustices, puts forward a new international. Derrida, through this philosophy, provides apologies for the neo-liberal status quo. The idea of private property, and the “freedom” of labor in the status quo, are given a pass by Derrida. He defends the oppression that comes from capitalism. He then rejects Marxism as totalitarian, and then puts forward a distributist method of social justice. Derrida’s methods deny revolutionary organization, and re-entrenches capitalism into everyday social lives. The main problem with this idea of social justice being a prority is the fact that it makes these alientated populations focus on solving issues of social injustice instead of solving the material conditions and oppression that is produced by the capitalist modes of production. In a little mini-Marxist critique of Striner, we can see that Striner’s proposed method of organization, the Union of Egoists, was just an abstraction, or a spook, as Striner dubbed it. The same can be said about the very “ego” he writes about. The final problem with Striner is the fact that the “unique one”, as Striner puts foward, or the subject is, as Bedggood puts it, “trapped in performativity as consumption of its alienated identity” (Bedggood) [33].
Part I: A Marxist Critique of Schopenhauerian “Western” Buddhism and De-Development Theory
So in Part K of Part 1, I talked about anxiety. Now, stress, anxiety, depression, etc. etc. are products of the contradictive capitalist dynamics. In response to this stress, a new ideology has been synthesized. This ideology has been dubbed Schopenhauerian, as in the German pessimist and philosopher, Schopenhauer, “Western Buddhism”. Some say that Western Buddhism is just a way to ease and resolve this stress, and that would be a good thing… right? Well, no. What this relaxation of capitalist tensions does is it helps adapt capitalism, it makes the stress minimal and then normalizes the stress. Western Buddhism is also a way to ease the tensions of the acceleration (by acceleration I’m referring to the acceleration of the ideology accelerationism) but that is for later [34]. Now some may say, “Is it not good to solve the interal issues and contradictions of capitalism which inturn makes it better?”. My answer to this ‘nah’. The reason this is not a good thing is the sheer fact that the internal contradictions which are inherent to capitalism are still there. The aforementioned stance that easing the contradictions of capitalism is a net benefit to society takes the stance of de-development being good as well as possible, not only on an individual scale but also on a larger collective scale. The problem with this thinking is that de-accelerating the inherent and underlining trends, as well as contradictions within capitalism, isn’t enough. We have to replace the current mode of production, that being capitalism, and transition into socialism. Slowing down capitalism only serves capitalism, it allows it to better adapt due to its now longer life span. De-growth strengthens capitalism. The only alternative is to dismantle capitalism and then leave it behind [35].
Part J: A Marxist Critique of Bifo and Apoliticism
So Bifo, identifies communism as a needed in the event of the fall of capital, But he takes an apolitical approach towards this. But when one takes an apolitical stance, they cede the political landscape to the dominant ideology, which currently is neo-liberalism. Apoliticism also gives up a possibility of organization. The other problem with Bifo’s apoliticism is the sheer fact that capitalism and the Bourgeoisie will do anything to keep their control. This means that, though capitalism will inevitably fall, or rather implode, do to its internal contradictions, it will last exponteintally longer due to apoliticism than without apoliticism [36].
Part K: A Marxist Critique of Kant
Kant and his philosophies are complict in affirming capital. Kantian Ethics endorses classical as well as neo-liberalism. Kant argues in favor of private property, as he thinks it is a pre-requisate of social stability. Now these are all agregious beliefs but we have yet to see his worse offense. His worse offense being the advoaction for the use of spirtual capital [37]. Now advocating for capitalism is bad but at least materialism is kinda taken into consideration, but spirtual capitalism takes out the materialist aspect of capitalism. Now what this does is it makes one look away, or rather, distracts one from the material conditions that capitalism puts them in. It is decieving in this way and in the sense that it adds another layer to get to class cocouisness.
Part L: A Marxist Critique of Gibson-Graham, Post-Modern “Marxism”, and Discourse
Gibson-Graham’s approach to dismantling capitalism is worthless. The way post-modernists like Gibson-Graham approach things is through analyzing lanugage. So how does Gibson-Graham cause revolutionary change or “dismantle” capitalism? Through changing how we define capitalism. They make it somehow disappear through psuedo-intellauctual hack magic. To further, when looking at post-modernism, it is clear that the focus is the philosophy of language. But the question: is discourse, alone, enough to make radical change; needs to to be answered. So is it? What a focus on discourse does is it gets us out of macro-politics and into micro-politics (which I critiqued in Baudrillard’s section). It focuses on this epistomology that only discourse matters. The worst offense of Post-Modern “Marxism” is that it disregards class, in favor of other forms of identification, which only help divide the Proletariat and serve the Bourgeoisie (I critiqued indenity politics in Part B of Part 1). The main problem with Gibson-Graham’s vision is the fact that without defining capitalism or changing the defention of capitalism, we embrace “the politics of surrender”. We give up any revolutionary potential or organization, as to Gibson-Graham, there is no capitalism to organize against [38]. Discourse focused on repersentation makes a focus on class impossible. It makes a material-focus non-important because one is focusing on non-material discourse [39] [40].
Part II: You just got bamboozled
Part 1: Lol
Part A: A MARXIST Critique
So hopefully you all picked up on something. That something is that I labeled every single part as a “Marxist Critique”. Now I’m not a Marxist. Some of this stuff I wrote in this JOLLIE I believe, but I don’t agree with everything I wrote. For example, I don’t believe the stuff about how class is the only “identity” we should have, as I am not a class reductionist. So do not take this JOLLIE as my opinion, instead, take this as a JOLLIE that expresses the views of many Orthodox Marxists and other Leftists. I only wrote this to give everyone a better understanding of the views of class reductionist orthodox Marxists. But I am not a Marxist, nor am I a class reductionist. The answer to what my politics are might be answered in another jollie.
References:
[1]: greanvillepost.com/special/Kovel,%20Enemy%20of%20Nature%20(2007).pdf pages 121–122.
[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227782781_Global_Capitalism_What's_Race_Got_to_Do_with_It pages 239–240 and page 245.
[3]: Cloud, Dana. “Marxism and Oppression”, Talk for Regional Socialist Conference, April 19, 2003
[4]: http://www.redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm
[5]: https://themighty.com/2017/10/how-capitalism-contributes-to-ableism/
[6]: https://isreview.org/issue/90/social-theory-disability
[8]: http://isj.org.uk/transgender-oppression-and-resistance/
[9]: https://ir.library.dc-uoit.ca/bitstream/10155/513/1/Pigeon_Nicole.pdf
[10]: https://www.pcma.org/ashton-applewhite-manifesto-ageism-tedtalk/
[11]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/style/ok-boomer.html
[12]: https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-slavoj-zizek/
[13]: https://speciesandclassdotcom.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/i-am-not-glad-you-are-vegan/
[14]: https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-abstract/19/1/197/31860/Beyond-Bare-Life-AIDS-Bio-Politics-and-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[15]: https://www.academia.edu/859731/_Deleuzian_capitalism_Philosophy_and_social_Criticism_2008_34_8_pp._877-903
[16]: Conversations With Zizek, p. 151–52
[17]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08935699008657941
[18]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/03/baud-m17.html
[19]: Zander, Pär-Ola. “Baudrillard’s Theory of Value: A Baby in the Marxist Bath Water?,” Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, Volume 26, Issue 3, 2014
[20]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08935699008657941
[21]: Katz, Adam. Postmodernism and the Politics of “Culture.” Pg.118.
[22]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25112139?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
[23]: Katz, Adam. Postmodernism and the Politics of “Culture.” Pg.118.
[24]: http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell2.htm
[25]: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/postmodernpolitics.pdf
[26]: Noys, Benjamin. The Culture of Death, Berg: New York, NY (2005), p. 24–27
[27]: Dana, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, “Beyond Evil: Understanding Power Materially and Rhetorically,” Fall 2003, muse, Vol. 6 №3
[28]: http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/printversions/theopportunismofthetranspatrioticleftprint.htm
[29]: Zizek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The absent centre of political ontology, 1999, pg. 251–257.
[30]: http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2012/machinethinkingandtheromanceofposthumanism.htm
[31]: Goux, Jean-Joesph. “General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism”, Goux, Yale French Studies, №78, On Bataille (1990).
[32]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0191453711427256
[33]: https://situationsvacant.blog/2008/03/02/saint-jacques-derrida-and-the-ghost-of-marxism/
[34]: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php
[35]: https://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem/
[36]: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2012/05/18/lifeboat-communism-a-review-of-franco-bifo-berardis-after-the-future/
[37]: http://journal.apee.org/index.php?title=Fall2006_3
[38]: https://search.proquest.com/openview/0596a36c62e66e040f393ab9982949ac/1?cbl=25534&pq-origsite=gscholar
[39]: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230117457_12
[40]: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/In-the-Tracks-of-Historical-Materialism-Anderson/e9379640fc1d810473776de6e76588862dd25a00
Titled: N/A
- I mean the goals of Orthodox Marxists is to establish a DotP, and end capitalism. They would most likely explain that the reason they haven’t been able to dismantle capitalism is because the Proletariat has been “domesticated”, i.e. they are the lumpenproletariat. Capitalism has coopted the social/cultural basis in order to re-enforce itself memetically. Capitlism will eventually die, it will collapse under the weight of it’s own contridictions, and when that happens, marxists, trots, anarchists, fascists, etc. will be waiting. We need to make sure that places like that of the Academy can be sites of resistance, so when capitalism does die, we can see these ideas come into fruition. To further, every time one pushes for anti-capitalism, we get closer to its death knell. To further, orthodox marxism was practiced in the Paris Commune, Several Communes in Germany after WW1. And it worked, but was crushed by the bourgeois apparatus of the state. Again, Capitalism’s primary way of maintaining itself is by saying there is no alternative, that ANYTHING but the status quo is Utopian. Even IF marxism is hard to achieve, we shouldn’t just sit back and do nothing when Capitalism is literally PULLING US AND OUR PLANET BY THE NECK INTO ARMAGEDDON!
2. So besides the various communes I just previously mentioned there haven’t been any orthodox Marxist states, but I’m going to assume that you’re referring to the USSR and China. Well first we can see that professing marxism and doing marxism are a lot different. Sure the Soviet Union did say it was doing marxism, THOUGH CHINA NEVER EVER SAID THEY WHERE DOING ORTHODOX MARXISM (as Mao found it to be 1. not compatible with the Chinese peasantry’s current situation and 2. infected with bourgeois western knowledge). But you can look at my previous Jollies on how the USSR was literally capitalists, I think every trot would agree with me. So the new levels of misery you’re ascribing to Marxism should instead be a reflection of oligarchical capitalism. To further, the USSR only had like 2 major famines, and after that they were completely famine free for the majority of its life. Also saying marxism leads to new levels of misery without realizing capitalism does at well isn’t good. Neo-Liberal Capitalism in it’s current state literally TREATS ANYONE WHO CAN’T MEASURE UP TO COMPETITIVENESS as TRASH (http://jacobinmag.com/2012/11/the-twinkie-defense-or-what-does-uncompetitive-mean/#sthash.aM63fqng.dpuf). Like capitalism treats workers as a calculable standard unit of currency, i.e. WORKERS BECOME NOTHING MORE THAN THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION! Let’s also look at all that settler colonialism capitalism did, TENS OF MILLIONS of natives dead at the hand of the imperial settler. Even then Capitalism also takes away freedom, as it subjugates all people to the endless profit drive. Like people want to start our economy back up while corona has yet to peak! They want to SACRIFICE WORKERS TO THE LINE!
3. Again, Marx agreed in Das Kapital Volume 1 that capitalism was better than feudalism, but the question is who has capitalism brought prosperity to? The ruling class! Like Capitalism NEEDS to have a rich and poor divide! CAPITALISM STRUCTURALLY NEEDS POVERTY, the extraction of surplus value from the proletarian poor through exploitation of labor IS A KEY ENGINE of capitalism as well as poverty relations! And the idea that everyone is doing better is based off stupid Reaganomics, like trickle down economics is just patently false! Capitalism sustains poverty (https://mronline.org/2011/10/11/capitalism-and-poverty/)! Like capitalism loves low wages, so saying capitalism doesn’t care about the health of the working class is just FACT! Again, Capitalism is a system built on top of class divisions, so it will maintain those divisions. It is an economic system that will ALWAYS create winners and losers! INEQUALITY AND POVERTY ARE THE NATURAL RESULT OF CAPITALISM! NEO-LIBERAL CAPITALISM WILL FREAKING KILL US AT THE LEAST BY 2040 AND AT THE MOST THE END OF THE CENTURY (https://www.alternet.org/2018/10/capitalisms-final-solution-nothing-less-complete-ecological-collapse/)! It is just sad… we have more than enough to go around to everyone, but some just HAVE to hold tight to modernity and the status quo. The bourgeoisie fears to be just like everyone else. It saddens me that anyone would advocate for such an evil, exploitative, dehumanizing, and bunk system, when the alternatives are as bright as the shining stars in the night sky..
Titled: A Critique of Capitalism
Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, a professor of critical theory at Syracuse University, once said, “It is, in the language of bourgeois stratification, an “upper middle class” citizenry for whom the question of poverty (exploitation) is non-existent, and the only question is the question of personal liberty (power).” It is the very contradictory nature of capitalism to produce problems. First, for definitions. Capitalism is where the means of production are privately owned. The means of production are objects used to produce economic value through labor, these include factories, hammers, sickles, etc. To put this into perspective, workers use the means of the productions to produce some said commodity and through the respective amount they put into said commodity a respective value is given to it. Later, this said commodity will be sold on the market for a profit. This is where the problems arise. Capitalism produces more problems than it solves; it exploits the Proletariat, it maintains itself, its hegemony, and the Bourgeoisie through the violent division of the Proletariat, and the alternatives are not only less problematic but liberating.
Capitalism produces the problem of inequality through the exploitation of the Proletariat. First, definitions. The Proletariat, or the proles, are the working class. The exploitation of the Proletariat’s labor can be simply explained. After the earlier said commodity is put on the market to be sold for a profit, it will have a price. This price is a set of factors that include: labor costs, transportation costs, etc. The price will also be relative to its value, which is the amount of relative labor was put into the said commodity. Now to make a large profit, the Bourgeoisie, or the people who are in control of and privately own the means of production, will cut the amount of money given back to the workers, this is a wage. In an ideal society, the surplus which comes from the labor of the worker should go back to the worker. The exploitation of the Proletariat is inherent to capitalism (Institute of the Economics Academy of the SSSR). Exploitation is inherent to capitalism, it can not be removed from it, and it will always be a problem. Ultimately, this inherent exploitation of the Proletariat leads to inequality. inequality is a problem. It leads to social, economic, and political bias, exclusion, and is a form of structural violence. This structural violence can take the form of poverty and always takes the form of wage-slavery. The very structure of capitalism makes inequality not only inevitable but also greater and growing (Muller). This bourgeois exacerbation of wealth inequality is leading to mass poverty and wage slavery, all across post-industrial capitalist countries. In conclusion, capitalism exploits the Proletariat, which directly leads to growing wealth inequality, and ultimately, violence.
Capitalism is inherently violent and through divisional bourgeois violence against the Proletariat, the interests of capitalism and the Bourgeoisie are maintained. The Bourgeoisie and capitalism use different fractal methods of keeping the Proletariat divided. For it is a unified and conscious working class they fear. These divisional methods always entail violence: “Why did it have to be imposed through violence wherever it set down its rule? And most importantly, why does it have to be continually maintained through violence, and continuously reimposed on each generation through an enormous apparatus of indoctrination?” (Kovel 121). Through methods of indoctrination, the Bourgeoisie keeps the working class in line and unconscious of the exploitation of their labor. The Bourgeoisie does not allow them to deviate from the common neo-liberal belief that capitalism is God. To further this notion that capitalism perpetuates and is based on violence, one must understand the very violent nature of the exploitation that is inherent to capitalism. Zavarzadeh furthers this, by saying, “Any society in which the labor of many is the source of wealth for the few-all class societies-is a society of violence, and no amount of “talking” is going to change that objective fact” (Zavarzadeh 114). No matter what good capitalism brings, it will never be able to resolve the violence it stands on. Ultimately, this violence capitalism stands on makes it non-viable for the political economy; instead, the political economy needs a better alternative.
Capitalism is extremely problematic and the alternatives to capitalism are liberating. A large talking point of the political puppets of the Bourgeoisie is that capitalism ‘has no alternative’. The problem with this mentality of ‘there is no alternative’ is the fact there is an alternative. This alternative is made up of two parts: the Socialist Revolution and the subsequent Marxist Liberation and Utopia. To Karl Marx, the liberation of the Proletariat was the liberation of all (Callinicos). This is the Marxist utopia: no oppression, no violence, no exploitation, there will be unity, justice, and equality. The problem with this utopia is how we reach it. Many have concluded that it is not possible to reach this utopia, but it is possible: “The socialist revolution… can only be, at one and the same time, the emancipation of the working class and the liberation of all the oppressed and exploited sections of society” (Callinicos 197). It is through the revolution that comrades of all races, sexualities, genders, ages, etc. will be free. Free to have the fruits of their very labor to themselves, free to love, and free to have leisure. Only through revolution can this praxis between the Marxists and the Proletariat be reached. The puppets of the Bourgeoisie squirm in their seats. They still believe the socialist revolution is not possible, but through the very contradictions of capitalism, like the rate of profit falling, and the exacerbation of class struggle, that makes the socialist revolution inevitable (Marx). In conclusion, Comrades from around the work must unite together in one Proletarian movement and Revolution for the aim of a Marxist Utopia.
In conclusion, Capitalism perpetuates violence through means of indoctrination and exploitation, and the only alternative to capitalism is a liberating Marxist revolution. The exploitation of the Proletariat through wage-slavery and the negatives of it are abhorrent and make any support for capitalism, not only a bourgeois position but a reactionary position. Growing wealth inequality turns any reason to support capitalism on its head. The Bourgeoisie extends the wretched and inevitably doomed lifetime of capitalism. The Bourgeoisie does this through methods of indoctrination and violence. Capitalism has alternatives, better alternatives. The final form of this alternative is liberation and a subsequent Marxist utopia. The way this liberation is achieved is through the Proletarian Marxist Revolution. Join a union, join CPUSA, vote for Bernie Sanders, aid the Revolution comrades. In totality, “workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains” (Marx and Engels).
Works Cited
Callinicos, Alex. The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx. Haymarket Books, 2012.
Institute of the Economics Academy of the SSSR. “Political Economy.” Edited by C P Dutt and Andrew Rothstein, Political Economy, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1957., www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch07.htm.
Kovel, Joel. The Enemy of Nature: the End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Zed Books, 2013.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Kommunistischer Arbeiterbildungsverein (Workers’ Educational Association), 1848.
Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. Verlag Von Otto Meisner, 1867.
Muller, Jerry Z. “Capitalism and Inequality.” Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 15 Sept. 2015, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality.
Zavarzadeh, Mas’ud. “The Pedagogy of Totality.” The Pedagogy of Totality, Red Critique, 23 Jan. 2003, www.redcritique.org/FallWinter2003/thepedagogyoftotality.htm.
Zavarzadeh, Mas’ud. The Stupidity That Consumption Is Just as Productive as Production”: In the Shopping Mall of the Post-Al Left,”. 3rd ed., vol. 21, College Literature, 1994.
May
Titled: A Poetry of Nothing By: Evan Jack
To many, the rebellious youth are flagrantly against them to just be a “rebel.” But is this true? When we go back to the French Revolution, was it not the rebels that beheaded the patricians and transitioned into bourgeois democracy? Was it not those rebels that brought us out of the insidious yoke of feudalism? Emissaries sent from King to King, Lord to Lord, well these rebels shouted “NO MORE!” They did this not for god, glory, or gold! No! They did this to go back! Back to the deep, dark, and origins of humanity! To go back and drink from those ancient fountains! Rebellious and kindred spirits dance madly in the night! This is what the revolutionaries wanted! They wanted to dance every day in the glory of their own uniqueness! Fracases break out everywhere! These are not fights for just pure destruction, but of creation! Creation of a new and free man! These rebels were tired of their very bodies being lacerated in the name of a cause that was not their own! In the name of the cause of God, or the king, humanity, nature, “NO MORE,” they shouted! They would only work for their own cause! Many believe revolution to be futile and reform to be the only option. Reform will only transform society! Revolutionaries want society’s abolition not transformation! “NO MORE!” is no longer a saying of the revolutionaries of the past, no… It is the truth of modernity! We will either have destruction or a revolution that serves to free our unique and immaculate selves! Our gait towards new ways of relations and communication can only happen through creative destruction! We have carped for too long about the failure of neo-liberal capitalism, our spectacle society, and civilization! TOO LONG comrades! We must dare to query EVERYTHING! We must not only question others, but also ourselves! We must question what are we? We are not just a pile of adjectives, identities, and social roles! No! We are unique, we are the creators of all things! We are nothing, as we can’t be defined by various adjectives, but we are creators! Therefore, we are the CREATIVE NOTHING! I will no longer stand in this queue for freedom! I will take it, I will steal it, I will make it my own, I will make it my property! In this post-modern era we live in there is no longer morality… We have killed the specter of morality! Strangled the abstract concept of rights, for to have a right to something implies you do not have a right to some other thing! We have beaten pity to a pulp, as we walk away we see it no longer waller. We have blown the head off of duty for we have no duty! We have no set course, no rules to follow, no arbitrary duty to complete! There is no good or bad, no virtuous or nefarious, no acceptable or unacceptable. My latter claim of there being no good or bad is not a claim, it is “truth”, MY TRUTH! We have gone beyond good and evil! Our new and guiltless genesis will be created by the Creative Nothing! It will be created by ourselves and for ourselves. Only from the unending and torchlit flames of insurrection, only from the insatiable and crackling pyres of revolution, only from the unquenchable and unruly fires of rebellion, ONLY FROM THE TRIUMPHANT INFERNAL ABYSS OF REVOLT WILL WE, THE CREATORS OF EVERYTHING, COME FROM NOTHING, COME FROM OUR UNIQUE SELVES! We are tired of this ongoing facade of the other’s “reality!” I am reality! All things are of me, and therefore my own! I have been down into the abyss and up in the glowing stars. We are the unflinching nihilists of reality, the non-believers in solitude, the creating poets and the destroying philosophers, we walk in the undefined path of our own interests! I will walk with others, but only for myself! My revolution begins with me, and ends with me! We, the vagabonds of destruction, the ones on the very edge of society, the ones in the abyss with our eyes set on the stars, WE WALK ON! We may carry the undefinable black flag of extreme anarchy, but we carry it not in service of anarchism but in service of ourselves! We carry them in the glory of the sun, with holy light shining upon them, while they flutter through the roaring winds! I know not where we will or even I will end up, this is an adventure after all comrades! Against Everything, and for the Creative Nothing! LET NOTHING BE FORBIDDEN, FOR ALL THINGS ARE PERMITTED!!!
Titled: Week One: World War II is pretty Spooky!
When we look at Stirner’s ‘spooks’ as he calls them, we see that the Nation is included in the definition. A spook is a social construction, i.e. an abstract concept with no material basis in reality. If you’re confused as to why I call the Nation a social construction, well think of it like this: borders aren’t real, and therefore all countries are equally fluid as are their borders. What I mean by this is there is no physical border between say Mexico and the USA, of course, we can build a wall but this isn’t a border… it is just a wall. Borders are just imaginary lines made up by colonists, explorers, and all the like. There is nothing inherently “American” about the ground that my house rests upon. Now you may be skeptical but if you are I just ask, ‘have countries been around forever?’ The answer is, no. If we can socially construct the USA, we can equally destruct the USA. Now onto the main point of this JOLLIES post.
WW2 was caused by Social Constructions, i.e. spooks. About everything I can think of that caused WW2 was a spook! The idea of the “German Nation” as well as the idea of places like Danzig being “rightful German clay,” are both spookity spooks. The idea of “German culture,” “German traditions,” “German customs,” all but figments of the imagination!
WW2 also perfectly represents why spooks were even created! They were created in order to control and seduce the public through an accumulation of political power by using these spooks.
The idea of a central and fixed identity is how ideology is reproduced, this is what Stirner observes. We can again make this observation when looking at WW2. The idea of a central and fixed Ayran/German identity was the primary way to reproduce the ideology that was National Socialism!
In the end, we can see that spooks only do harm! So free yourself from these societal bonds, throw off your domestication and live not for others, but live to be truly alive!
Comrade, Evan.
Titled: Week 3: The Cold War (Nuclear Arms Race)
I learned that the Nuclear Arms Race was one of the most important events in all of human history. The doomsday clock was close to midnight many times. The total annihilation of humanity was more than just a faint smell. It was a smell that reeked of Nirvana, the blowing out of the candle. The Tsar Bomba could destroy islands. Tens of thousands of tons of thermonuclear weapons were stockpiled by both sides. 1962: JFK determines that there is 1 in 3 chance of nuclear war because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 1961: The Berlin Crisis starts. US and USSR tanks return fire at checkpoint charlie. JFK considers nuclear first strike an option. 1973: Israel has cut off and encircled the Egyptian army, the USSR threatens nuclear threats. 1983: the Able Archer incident. These are just some of the incidents that could have lead to the complete destruction of humanity. We would skulls in the sand with the wind blowing the ashes of billions into the wind.
But I want to get a little more into why this is even bad. So is nuclear annihilation bad? Well… yes and no. It is not bad because it is a return to the silent, a blowing out of the candle. It will be the end of ALL suffering as we know it. Because there will be no one left to mourn. It is bad because it takes away the possibility to live our lives by the Nietzschean ethic of Amor Fati. Though the negation of suffering is to most good, Nietzsche had a different opinion. He believed we could get our meaning in life from our suffering. To Nietzsche it was these experiences, while we are in the hurricane of sorrow, that gave life meaning.
Titled: Week 4: WW2 and the Cold War and Even Spookier part 2!
I think that like WW2, the Cold War was just caused by Spooks! The ideological specters of “Communism”, or rather Marxist-Leninism, and Capitalism where the dominant ideologies that took standing in during the Cold War. Ideology which is only reproduced by actions done within a essential and fixed identity, say like that of work (the action) done by “a worker,” (the identity) is what produce ideology. The ideological “battle” of the Cold War was why it was a Cold war. I think it is not because of no conflict because that would be ignorant to say, I think it is rather because the war was done between ideological specters. I further do not understand why this “war” even occurred because the USSR was capitalist, I agree with Trotsky in saying that it was State Capitalist. There was still commodity production so it couldn’t have been non-capitalist,… but I digress. Things like American Nationalism and Soviet Nationalism were main drivers of the Cold War as well, which reflects how German Nationalism, Italian Nationalism, and Japanese Nationalism were the main drivers in the Second World War. Personally, I do not believe that WW2 ended with the defeat of the Axis powers, rather I think new enemies were recognized and the war went on. I believe it was George Patton who said something like “we defeated the wrong enemy,” when he arrived in Berlin and saw the Soviet Hordes.
Titled: Live! By: Evan Jack
Under capitalism we are all dead. This may be a surprise to many, but it is still our reality. Our lives become mere commodities! We become nothing less than a ritual of capital, nothing more than the subjects of production. We produce to consume, we consume, to survive, we survive to avoid death. But are we not all ready dead? We become the non-owners of our own production. We produce our own expropriation. We produce our own exclusion from ourselves. By this I mean that we produce our own alienation, we become no longer of ourselves, and in this we all become socially dead. We become subordinated to the objects of production. We can’t create anthropomorphic objects, because these objects aren’t full of human life, they are the antithesis of it, they are the negators of it. Alienation is a condition of survival, of this economic reality. In fact, it is a condition of all economic realities. It is a catholic condition of every economic reality. So we aren’t living… no comrades… we are surviving…
But how can we escape this? Is there an escape? My answer will always be: “Yes!” There is an escape. There is a way to have a deluge of life! But I must caution you comrades! This will be an eerie journey into the void! Our wild, free, dancing, and martial spirits will be freed, in our walk towards the void!
Civilization is what we sadly live in. Civilization is characterized by a small minority being the beneficiaries of constant exploitation of the large majority! So to free ourselves we mustn’t stop at the destruction of capitalism we must also destroy civilization! But how can we destroy both capitalism and civilization? Are these not all encompassing leviathans, which no sailors at sea can kill? Are these not the leviathans that cause the boats to careen into servitude? “No!” We can destroy these institutions of repression, this network of domination, by doing one thing: WE MUST STOP WORKING! By this I mean, we must stop working for others, we must stop being (wage) slaves, we must stop being forced into labor and production, WE MUST RELAX! We must no longer say, Workers of the World, Unite! NO! We must say, WORKERS OF THE WORLD RELAX! We cannot throw off our shackles in a post-capitalist society in which economic exchange are done based off of value or even happen at all! In 1905, Leon Trotsky said, “That the historical life of every society is founded on production; that production gives rise to classes and to groupings of classes.” This means in a, say, communist “utopia,” we mustn’t use the master’s tools! Leftism isn’t beyond bourgeois liberalism, it is only radical liberalism! The end goals of both bourgeois liberalism and leftism are both one in the same: a society based upon principles of rationality, liberty, equality, and cooperation. So if the capitalist and reactionary right cannot give us an answer and the radical bourgeois left cannot give us an answer, what can? My answer is “oneself.”
When looking at Trotsky’s aforementioned quote, we can see the line: “life of every society is founded on production.” So we have another task, not a duty, but rather another titan in the way of our freedom! This new leviathan is the final leviathan… it is SOCIETY! WE MUSTN’T STOP AT THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM NOR CIVILIZATION! NO COMRADES! WE MUST RUSH PAST AND FLY BEYOND EVERY SYSTEM! When we do what is within our passions and desires, we are at war with society. The destruction of society is the destruction of all social relations, and therefore the destruction of classism, racism, sexism, gender based oppression, oppression based upon ethnicity, speciesism, transphobia, heightism, etc. THE DESTRUCTION OF SOCIETY IS THE UNBRIDLED FREEDOM OUR EGO DESIRES! When we live in our own aplomb and our regrets wither away, we are living by Nietzsche’s amor fati. We will no longer be subverted and exploited by this guile society. NO! We will have more than just a modicum of life in our war against society! YES COMRADES! WELL WILL BE TRULY ALIVE! We won’t just allow society to fester! NO! WE WILL BURN THE ALREADY ROTTING CORPSE OF SOCIETY! IN THE SHADOW OF GOD AND ON THE ASHES OF SOCIETY, THE NEW MAN WILL BORN! NO LONGER WILL WE LANGUISH! NO LONGER WILL THE PALL OF THE SHADOW OF GOD SUFFOCATE US! NO LONGER! WE HAVE KILLED GOD! WE HAVE KILLED SOCIETY, CIVILIZATION, CAPITALISM, THE LEFT, THE RIGHT! WE HAVE NEGATED ALL THINGS, AND LEFT ONLY NOTHING! We have only left our Creative Nothings. I am sick and tired of this rancid taste of this techno-industrial, spectral, and Neo-Liberal Capitalist Society of the Spectacle!
We must wreak HAVOC upon ALL THINGS! We will become as, Renzo Novatore says, “a shadow eclipsing any form of society which can exist under the sun.” ONWARD! For a war against this society! A WAR AGAINST ALL SOCIETIES! A war waged by ourselves and for ourselves! We will jump into the abyss with the stars in our eyes… We will destroy everything! And from nothing… I will be, for the first time ever… IN HISTORY….. truly… alive.
Titled: The Revolutionary Guise of the Post-Revolutionary Bourgeois Subject
The symbol of the guillotine represents the theme of revolution and tyranny in A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. O’ the Bourgeois Revolutionaries of France! Their end goal, a society based on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The bourgeois revolutionaries strived for these aforementioned principles, but at what cost? “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!” (Dickens 280). It is clear, this is a revolution of no constraint! The guillotine will just be and symbolizes the thundering decision of the exploited masses. It is the quick and sharp lightning that is met by the late thunder of death.
The guillotine was not just a symbol of revolution. No! It was a symbol of tyranny. For what is more tyrannical than the blind persecution of the patricians and then later the revolutionaries themselves?
“Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world — the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack” (Dickens 159).
The words, ‘National Razor,’ echo in the ears of the lumpenproletariat, for they can not yet know their destiny of consciousness. The words National Razor show the guillotine to the Razor of the State. Therefore this is institutionalized tyranny! The institution, the state, and the tyranny, of the guillotine! In conclusion, the guillotine clearly symbolizes the themes of revolution and tyranny.
The symbol of weapons represents the theme of revolution and tyranny in A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. O’ the Bourgeois Revolutionaries of France! Both the Bourgeois Revolutionaries and the Reactionary defenders of the Monarchy used weapons. Weapons were used for revolution. They represent revolution! Insurrection! Rebellion! The Revolutionaries already armed!
“Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed — so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise” (Dickens 97).
The Revolutionary Subject, armed will every weapon known or unknown… liberating. Or is it? The thought of revolutionaries possessing weapons is exhilarating, but only if they’re revolutionaries… Once, the republic of this new, bourgeois, and rational society is declared and enforced, it is the status quo, it is not revolutionary!
“Every town gate and village taxing house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death” (Dickens 264).
Once the questioners for freedom, now the questioners for security! The Republic is now the status quo, it the norm! This means, all the actions of the members of the Republic can no longer be guised in a revolutionary veil. We these actions for what they are: extensions of the institution of State. The quote is explicit. These are ‘national rifles,’ these are rifles of the state, the nation, the republic! These are the weapons of now revolutionary but of a bourgeois puppet! The ‘national rifle,’ as it is dubbed by Dickens, symbolizes the means by which the tyranny of this post-revolutionary bourgeois rule is enforced! In conclusion, weapons represent revolution and tyranny.
July
Titled: Maturity with the Establishment, A Cog in the Capitalist Machine of Hellish Modernity, and How Should We Deal with Everything?
SIKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEE YOU THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO END IT OFF ON A HAPPY NOTE OF RELAX?! NO NO NO!
The call to become “mature” and to fall in line with the Establishment is a domesticating call. It is a call that comes not out of love for another but out of either ignorance or want of control. We must reject this call! The ones yet to be fully domesticated by this Neo-Liberal and Techno-Industrial Capitalist Society are the youth! The subject that is the Youth still has a creative energy that has yet to be siphoned off by the ruling class. We must not give in and be obedient but rather be disobedient!
There is next to no human life on this planet we call Earth, almost no one is living! We are, from birth, born into a society that is already against us! Through conditioning in that of the place known as School, we are taught to accept and resign to the current social order! Barely anyone is living! A condition of survival that is constant and never-ending or fluctuating is that of alienation! We are no longer ourselves but alien to ourselves when we have identities assigned to us! At birth, it is a boy, girl, intersex, hermaphrodite, etc. We are put into social roles that are 1. not of our choosing and 2. serve to reproduce the current social order. After school, the alienation gets worse… I reject the concept of wage-slave, not because this isn’t true but because it only serves to reproduce and grant legitimacy to the current hell that is our Neo-Liberal present! We aren’t wage-slaves. No! We are just slaves! We are slaves every time we are forced to do involuntary production and labor i.e. work! We are slaves every time our “race,” “gender,” “class,” etc. is what becomes our central and forced identity! We are slaves every time we go to school! We are slaves when are forced to take meds for our “problems” i.e. what the ruling class sees as threats to steady production; I take meds for my ADHD because I apparently have to focus, but why should I focus, the answer is quite clear: it is so I can focus on my imposed “duties,” “work,” “future jobs,” etc! We are slaves every time someone is detained at the border because they aren’t “American,” because for some reason the soil of Mexico and the USA at the border is inherently different! We are slaves every time someone tells us not to do something because it is “morally wrong,” or “that’s not the right thing to do sweety!” We are and become slaves every second that we aren’t revolting or aren’t in an insurrection against all status quos! We are slaves every time we follow a cause that isn’t our own!
We have been conditioned to fall in line with the capitalist system. One must become “a cog in the machine” that is the apparatus of capital. This latter statement are the words of the ruling order! So many anarchists propose new societies where all are “equal!” Yet power is still present as work is still present, as society is still present, as identity is still present, as social roles are still present! Not even in the most egalitarian of anarcho-communist societies can we not be slaves, can we even be free, can we live… We must go beyond that of even the “entirety” of the Left, including even the most radical of anarcho-communists, and the left-communists as well! I can only find comfort in that of my comrades that are Post and Ultra Leftists, but still, I have my thoughts on Ultra-Leftism.
Like all slaves, we have a choice… Though I’m not one for binaries, this is a binary choice! The choice is SUICIDE OR REVOLUTION!!! By suicide I don’t even exclusively mean material death, I mean both material and immaterial death as to resign to the current social order is to wilfully alienate oneself, allow the expropriation of oneself, produce your own exploitation, and to produce one’s own societal exclusion. To submit to the fear of the future, to security, to society is to die! We have but one choice and that is revolution! We must begin to truly live. We must be not on the edge of society but rather be the ones that jump off the edge of society in the nihilistic abyss! We must create through our destruction! It is through the destruction of the current social order as well as all future social orders, that we will create ourselves on top of the dead and burning corpse of the god that is the present and become nothing… a Creative Nothing!
I wait for no-thing! I begin my revolution today, with or without you! I must jump off of the edge of society and into the abyss, so I can catch up with my comrades that have already taken the leap and have been falling. I and this group of destructive, creative, and nihilistic outsiders, will all meet at the bottom of the void! We will transcend and go beyond space and time! We will reach the bottom of an infinite void! At the bottom of that pit, right off the edge of society is where we will be truly alive! With stars in our eyes, our bodies in the abyss, and our dreams no longer in our heads but in reality, we will become, “a shadow eclipsing any form of society which can exist under the sun” — Renzo Novatore.
This will be my final jollies post comrades! I caution you of the adventure you may take if you decide to choose life and revolution over death and submissive suicide; for no one knows what will come, but we do know we will figure it out once we get “there.”
“I have based my affair on nothing” — Max Stirner.
Live for your desires, passions, relations, and experiences! Live for yourself! Live to truly be alive! Live so that you’re your life! Just live comrades, (comrade) Evan Jack!
August
Titled: I hate children
Opening Statements
Sophia: Your view of life is based on an egoistical interpretation of what it means to be human — we are nothing more than a particular arrangement of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur; the abortion they prevent is nothing more than a rearrangement of that matter.
Two implications:
- There is no negative consequence to abortion — you must prove why human existence is somehow important.
- Our opponents establish hierarchies which lead to fascism — every example of human advancement has come at the expense of all other forms of life: we took life from trees and grass to build our homes, we steal energy from the sun to know the world, and we for some reason want to preserve human development so we can unlock the secrets of the universe. The negative consequence is an ongoing genocide of all life in the universe.
Inevitably, this is the very fascist logic that allows the worst forms of neoliberal domination to continue, extending the dead hand of docile and bare life as far as possible.
In the end, death is not only inevitable, but the conditions created by neoliberalism makes death desirable.
Evan: There is no honor or beauty in human life under neoliberalism — death is forgotten fast as another worker takes your place. We become mortified zombies good for work. Everything wishes for death because there is nothing to live but another routine day at the factory. Neoliberalism produces carbon copies of life used to power the mills.
We castrate our lives in the name of death. Death grabs hold of the libido and strangles joy because it is safer to sit on our couch with duct tape and bottled water watching fox news. Our opponent’s framing of life causes the Oedipal desire for fascism to creep into every facet of existence — the negative consequence is a sickness that ushers in a depressive tone of existence.
Death is a fantasy — our biology means we cannot truly “die” or cease to be, rather we enter a new form of becoming: becoming earth, becoming decomposition. Even if we are all wiped from the face of the earth in a hailstorm of nuclear bombs the process of life goes on even at the micro-level. There is no unique reason why the biological construct of human deserves a place higher than the construct of atoms. Also to extend my partner’s earlier point, this desire to be secure from death is the most personal level of micro fascism that negates our ability to live life to its fullest and breeds ressentiment.
Death is a natural part of biological life. Death occurs on every level both conscious and unconscious in every passage of existence. Every form of being controls within it a unique form of life and death and thrives off those microcosms. The end result of these beings is the act of becoming — death as the endpoint of the cycle before entering a new form of becoming — death then does not exist. Even nuclear annihilation continues the life cycle by birthing billions of new radiation cells.
Questions of only body counts allow the continuation of the worst things in the world so long as people don’t die. We never stopped slavery, just exported it to sweatshops, never ended fascism just hid it under patriotism, and never stopped genocide, just labeled it peace actions.
This desire to secure us from death is the most personal level of micro fascism that negates our ability to live life to its fullest and engage in freedom of being.
Sophia: This is not accidental. The logic of neoliberalism ensures docile bare life spreads as far as it can.
We win two external arguments to your deployment of neoliberalism:
- Death is inevitable in the world of neoliberalism, which you affirm.
- The enclaves of desire occupied by neoliberalism as desire create the conditions which make the masses desire death.
Pack up and go home — there is no answer to what we have put forward.
Titled: Primitivism Debate Doc
On Power
Where does Power Originate?
Perlman — Creation of institutions or abstract power relations as the defining moment at which primitive anarchy begins to be dismantled by civilized social relations.
Zerzan — The development of symbolic mediation — in the forms of numbers, language, time, art, and agriculture — as the means of transition from human freedom to a state of domestication.
On Technology
Definition — “the ensemble of division of labor/production/industrialism and its impact on us and on nature” (Zerzan).
“Technology is the sum of mediations between us and the natural world and the sum of those separations mediating us from each other. Technology is all the drudgery and toxicity required to produce and reproduce the stage of hyper-alienation we languish in” (Moore).
Tools =/= Technology
Primitive people had all kinds of tools but not technologies, to quote Perlman, “The material objects, the canes and canoes, the digging sticks and walls, were things a single individual could make, or they were things, like a wall, that required the cooperation of many on a single occasion … Most of the implements are ancient, and the [material] surpluses [these implements supposedly made possible] have been ripe since the first dawn, but they did not give rise to impersonal institutions. People, living beings, give rise to both” (Perlman).
Definition — “Tools are creations on a localized, small-scale, the products of either individuals or small groups on specific occasions” (Moore).
Tools are small-scale and therefore can not and do not give rise to systems of control and coercion.
Titled: Pineapple on Pizza Bad
Opening Statement
[Evan for the first 3 points]
First, to quote Deleuze, “The slave requires premises of reaction and negation, of resentiment and nihilism, in order to obtain an apparently positive conclusion” (Deleuze 120).
This means that to make an apparently positive moral claim, the Affirmative must be a being of ressentiment, to even make an apparently positive claim — though we will deny this validity of its moral clarity if they can get past this first layer.
Now, the Affirmative must prove ressentiment in order to prove they have moral validity to their claims — 2 issues:
- To be a being of ressentiment, in the words of Deleuze, one needs to conceive of a non-ego, this is to say, one must oppose oneself to the non-ego in order to position oneself as self.
- This is to say that the slave has to have two negations in order to produce an appearance of affirmation. The slave must say, “you are evil, therefore I am good” (Deleuze 121).
- Two negatives do not make a positive in an ethical calculation.
- This means they can’t just say we are wrong for them to be right — they have to independently prove validity.
Second, Culture, understood as cultural production and consumption, is a mirror of material production.
Material production, ever since the 1929 Crash, has been in a state of overproduction, or in a state of threatening overproduction. In 1929, growth was giving way to excessive over-growth. And ever since, this over-growth has kept our societies in a state of increasingly acute economic crisis.
This diagnosis can be made of culture.
To quote Baudrillard, “the other Crash threatening us is that of cultural overproduction” (Baudrillard).
The powers that be want us to believe that in the cultural market place demand still exceeds supply. That people supposedly have an insatiable hunger for cultural goods. The issue is that factually, this is not the case at all.
“In the cultural economy of the average citizen . . . there is a noticeable surplus of supply over demand . . . the illimited promotion of cultural products already far exceeds human capacity to absorb them. The average person no longer even has the time to consume his own cultural products, let alone those of others” (Baudrillard).
Pineapple on pizza is an example of the overproduction of culture — so we independently reject it.
Third, “Whoever acts, substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being” (Bataille 26).
This means that all action specializes insofar as it is limited as action and fragments our very ontology.
“I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise, I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a total human being” (Bataille 27).
This is to say when one limits their desires to possessing an end, you act and know what you have to do. The possibility of failure becomes unimportant — and right from the start, you insert your existence advantageously into time. This makes your existence fragmentary, as it is being defined by the utility. This is to say, “Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal. And your time becomes a march toward that goal” (Bataille 27).
“I hold onto my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act — or at least by denying the superiority of time. Which is reserved for action. Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it” (Bataille 27).
This is all to say that our opponents’ very attempt to put pineapple on the pizza is a negative ontological action — and ontology comes first as it proceeds action and being itself. This is the first layer of the round, which we are winning and will win.
Evan’s Stuff
Modules
Module — Moral Warranting ~ Ressentiment
First, to quote Deleuze, “The slave requires premises of reaction and negation, of resentiment and nihilism, in order to obtain an apparently positive conclusion” (Deleuze 120).
This means that to make an apparently positive moral claim, the Affirmative must be a being of ressentiment, to even make an apparently positive claim — though we will deny this validity of its moral clarity if they can get past this first layer.
Now, the Affirmative must prove ressentiment in order to prove they have moral validity to their claims — 2 issues:
- To be a being of ressentiment, in the words of Deleuze, one needs to conceive of a non-ego, this is to say, one must oppose oneself to the non-ego in order to position oneself as self.
- This is to say that the slave has to have two negations in order to produce an appearance of affirmation. The slave must say, “you are evil, therefore I am good” (Deleuze 121).
- Two negatives do not make a positive in an ethical calculation.
- This means they can’t just say we are wrong for them to be right — they have to independently prove validity.
Impacts
Impact — Culture Crash
Culture, understood as cultural production and consumption, is a mirror of material production.
Material production, ever since the 1929 Crash, has been in a state of overproduction, or in a state of threatening overproduction. In 1929, growth was giving way to excessive over-growth. And ever since, this over-growth has kept our societies in a state of increasingly acute economic crisis.
This diagnosis can be made of culture.
To quote Baudrillard, “the other Crash threatening us is that of cultural overproduction” (Baudrillard).
The powers that be want us to believe that in the cultural market place demand still exceeds supply. That people supposedly have an insatiable hunger for cultural goods. The issue is that factually, this is not the case at all.
“In the cultural economy of the average citizen . . . there is a noticeable surplus of supply over demand . . . the illimited promotion of cultural products already far exceeds human capacity to absorb them. The average person no longer even has the time to consume his own cultural products, let alone those of others” (Baudrillard).
Pineapple on pizza is an example of the overproduction of culture — so we independently reject it.
Overview — Culture Crash (Long)
“The collection of world cultures is like a giant economy, and it operates on the same principles. People can only deal with so much culture; limited amounts of it can be consumed. Culture is already being overproduced, and everyone is already being overwhelmed with cultural artifacts and practices. Their effort to preserve a particular culture aids in this market saturation of culture.
Like any other market, when something is in too great of supply, its value drops, so the more culture there is, the less people value it, and it stops having any real-life application — in practical terms, people stop having time to deal with all the different practices of culture out there, so they stop caring about any of them, which turns their impacts.
Also, this overproduction will result in a complete crash of all culture, like the Great Depression of the 30s. This means the destruction of everything they try to protect because it lacks any value and people abandon culture entirely, so not only the culture they protect is lost but all other ones too, as cultures become another minimum value commodity to be used and cast away.”
Pineapple on pizza is only a proliferation of culture, signs, and meaning, pushing us to the crash of culture itself, which completely turns their advocacy.
Overview — Culture Crash (Short)
“First, culture is like an economic product, and its already overproduced. They protect culture, so there’s more of it and the value of it drops, so all the good stuff they claim to save by protecting culture is no longer there, because culture is no longer valued by people.
Second, this leads to the destruction of all culture, a worldwide rejection of all cultural products as useless. That’s bigger than anything they can claim to solve for, and is a terminal impact that outweighs anything they can claim.
Third, its crucial to allow some culture to be destroyed in order to save the whole — only by letting the supply drop so the value of it can increase will culture retain any meaning. Allow their impacts to happen to avoid the crash of culture.”
Pineapple on pizza is only a proliferation of culture, signs, and meaning, pushing us to the crash of culture itself, which completely turns their advocacy.
Impact — Action Bad
“Whoever acts, substitutes a particular end for what he or she is, as a total being” (Bataille 26).
This means that all action specializes insofar as it is limited as action and fragments our very ontology.
“I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise, I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a total human being” (Bataille 27).
This is to say when one limits their desires to possessing an end, you act and know what you have to do. The possibility of failure becomes unimportant — and right from the start, you insert your existence advantageously into time. This makes your existence fragmentary, as it is being defined by the utility. This is to say, “Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal. And your time becomes a march toward that goal” (Bataille 27).
“I hold onto my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act — or at least by denying the superiority of time. Which is reserved for action. Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it” (Bataille 27).
This is all to say that our opponents’ very attempt to put pineapple on the pizza is a negative ontological action — and ontology comes first as it proceeds action and being itself. This is the first layer of the round, which we are winning and will win.
Overview — Action Bad
“All action mutilates the totality of our existence, tapering it off in subordination to a goal. The only way to avoid such slavery, to totalize our freedom, is to immanently dissolve into the moment, to burn with desire for desire’s sake, to laugh to death”
Solvency — Solution to Action
Here are our following solutions to Action:
- The sacrifice of utility.
- This is our first step toward a radical community of expenditure.
- A call for the death of god.
- “The sacrificial destruction of reason and utility.”
- This is vital to affirm the useless dissolution of the self into the very immanence of the sacred.
Titled: What am I doing with my life
Arguments for Ava and Leo’s arguments
Schopenhauer
Thesis
P1: Humans want things.
P2: Suffering is when humans want what they don’t have/don’t get what they want.
P3: We’ll always want something new, even after we get something we want.
C1: Therefore, wanting creates suffering.
C2: Therefore, happiness is when we get what we want.
C3: Therefore, we can never be happy; as desire never ends.
Warranting for Each Premise and Conclusion
Premise 1 and 3
Humans desire out of lack — we have been separated from the objet petit a (lost object of desire). We spend all of our lives searching for this lost object, but we can never find it. This is why 1. We desire and 2. Why we will always continue desiring, even after we get something we want.
Premise 2 and Conculsion 1
Desire generates suffering because we are discontent with the “now” and want to achieve/gain our objective (the objet petit a).
Conclusion 2 and 3
We have a temporary moment of joy when we gain what we want.
Life is suffering because all of life consists of the drive to fulfill all possible desires, and we have an incapacity to fulfill these desires.
Characterization of Thesis
Life is suffering. Joy is only the temporary cessation of the eternal pain we call living.
Schopenhauer’s Solutions
Asceticism
Renunciation of desire i.e. surrendering want itself.
Art
“Through art and the aesthetic experience we can escape the suffering of our ordinary mental state” (Ford; https://web.archive.org/web/20150103211911/http://dialecticonline.wordpress.com/autumnwinter-issue-no-1/art-and-the-aesthetic-experience-in-arthur-schopenhauer/)
Issues with Schopenhauer’s Solutions
Issues with Asceticism
- The will dooms us to a perpetual cycle of suffering.
- We can never stop desiring — Deleuze and Guattari say we are ‘desiring-machines.’
Nietzsche and Cioran
Thesis (Nietzsche and Cioran)
P1: Suffering is an unavoidable condition of humanity.
C1: We must have a willful affirmation of suffering.
Warranting of Each Premise and Conclusion
Premise 1
[see Warranting of Schopenhauer in the section above]
Conclusion 1
We cannot escape our suffering — denying it through attempts at escape only generates more despair and contempt, turning the entire reason we would try to do such a thing — this leaves us only with affirmation, that is creation out of destruction.
Nietzsche and Cioran’s Solutions
Affirmation (Nietzsche’s)
We only have the option to affirm our suffering — this is our only option — we can’t do anything else.
Becoming the Dancing Flame (Cioran’s Solution)
We must affirm our suffering!
For there is nothing else to do!
There is no escape from the bottom-feeding abyss of spine-shattering shrieks and screams induced by the agony of suffering that is life.
We must ‘bathe in fire’!
We must have a willful affirmation of our complete annihilation — we must become nothing but a dancing flame.
“The bath of fire: you’re being ablaze, all flashes and sparks, consumed by flames as in hell” (Cioran 45).
The bath of fire, of hell, purifies so radically that it does away with existence.
Hell’s heat-waves and scorching flames burn the kernel of life.
The flames smother its vital elan, turning its unpurified aggressiveness into purified aspiration.
“To live in a bath of fire” (Cioran 45), is the state of an immaterial purity, where one is nothing but a dancing flame — freed from the laws of gravity, life becomes illusion or dream.
The feeling of this state, this feeling of seductive ecstasy, of boundless orgasmic gaze, this feeling of dreamy unreality gives way to the sensation of “becoming ash” (Cioran 45).
“When all is ashes” (Cioran 45), there are both ‘mad delights and infinite irony’ in the though of my ashes scattered to the four winds, sown frenetically in space, an eternal reproach to the world.
[NOTE: Everything under this NOTE is my (Evan) addition to Cioran’s theory of becoming a dancing flame]
But what are we missing here? We have the fire, but what to dance to? What other than music!? Music is what makes the flame dance (move), we sway and flicker with the response to such immaculate art. Music moves us in our times of despair; we listen, cry, wail with music. Music that is meaningful.
But what is meaningful? I say what moves us, even if it is only one-note in the song, we are moved — the still flame that only flickers once or twice is still a dancing flame. The ecstasy from the one-note brings us to a state of fiery remembrance. We remember pain and cries but also love and eye-rolling pleasure. Our ears become overwhelmed with pleasure and we can return to this state at any time.
So, we are to become dancing flames as Cioran declares! WE ARE ALREADY IN THE FLAMES OF HELL, I PROCLAIM! Let us start the music… the music of life! — Evan.
September
Titled: Finn, Weston, and Evan’s Doc
[Note: I wrote all of this. Finn and Weston did not contribute to this]
On the Philosophical
On Moral/Ethics
Alienation (Nietzsche)
Moral and Ethical systems are alienating to human life — These systems impose a model onto us that has no grounding to the individual — this is life-denying.
Quotes:
To quote Nietzsche in The Gay Science, “In the main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: ‘Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome thyself!’ On the other hand I am favorable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning to evening, to dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it well, as well as is possible for me alone! . . . I do not like any of the negative virtues whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation” (Nietzsche 304).
Nietzsche then goes on to say, in Twilight of the Idols, the “sin of morality” (Daigle), by saying, “The most general formula at the basis of every religion and morality is: ‘Do this and this — and you will be happy! Otherwise. . . .’ Every morality, every religion is this imperative-I call it the original sin of reason, immortal unreason” (Nietzsche in “Errors” 2).
Summary:
To summarize these quotes, we can say that, for Nietzsche, the problem with morality is it doesn’t look at the individual as the individual is and aims to embrace (amor fati) what the individual is but, instead, aims to impose an alienating moral system/model on the individual that has no grounding in reality.
Solution:
Nietzsche has ethics of creativity, and he wants us to create our own values which don’t rely or have a basis on any transcendental (think of Kant) or external (think of Rand) rule.
Nietzsche’s solution is for us to become our own master, to become an Overman, “more than a man, a human being that is human and more” (Diagle). He wants us to become the Übermensch.
The Übermench “is the individual who has overcome the fragmentation inherent in tradition. It is the person who reunited himself, who has decided to live fully as he is. It is also the person who knows that life is will to power and that he himself is an instance of this will to power. Accordingly, he wishes to embody and respect the will to power within himself. In addition to all of this, he accepts the eternal return hypothesis” (Diagle).
Utilitarianism Bad
[Note: The basic definition of the principle of utility is the greatest happiness for the greatest number]
Utilitarian calculations simplify ontological issues, by creating the dichotomy of the ‘greater good’ and the evil which must be stopped.
Utilitarianism is appalling — Utilitarian logic has empirically lead to genocide.
For example, the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust was justified on utilitarian grounds. The Volksgemeinschaft used the irrational fears of racial “pollution” which the majority of Nazi Germans feared as a basis for justification of the Holocaust.
On Death
Death isn’t Bad
There is an inherent paradox about representations of death. The paradox is that death is beyond signification. This means two things:
- The aesthetic rendition of death is always a misrepresentation.
- Representations of death are always culturally constructed.
Because death is outside any subject’s realm of experience, death is something that is not known.
“Death can only be read as a signifier with an incessantly receding, ungraspable signified, invariably always pointing back self-reflexively to other signifiers” (Brofen).
“At the same time it [death] is everywhere, because death begins with birth and remains present on all levels of daily existence, each moment of mortal existence insisting that its measure is the finitude toward which it is directed” (Brofen).
Upholding Life as Inherently Valuable = Ontological Slavery (Baudrillard)
[NOTE: This could be a response to Ayn Rand’s Ethics]
“We should try to get beyond the moral imperative of unconditional respect for human life” (Baudrillard 68).
In the past, the master was the one who was exposed and could gamble with death. Whereas, the slave was the one deprived of death as well as destiny.
Today, we are sheltered from death, and occupy exactly the position of the slave, but those who have their deaths at their own disposal, and go beyond maximizing life and having survival as their exclusive aim, are the ones who symbolically/ontologically occupy the position of the master.
On the Economic
On Capitalism
Capitalism is Satan (Bataille)
For capitalism, things (commodities and production) aren’t what is becoming; “if things are within it, if it is itself the thing, this is im the way that Satan inhabits the soul of someone possessed… or that the possessed, without knowing it, is Satan himself” (Bataille 124).
Capitalism = Man reduced to Thing (Bataille)
Under capitalism, the whole body is subjected to the activities of things. Life under capitalism, is life under the reign of things.
“The Bourgeoisie created the world of confusion” (Bataille 124). They created a world of things, and man’s reduction is no longer that of God but that of the thing.
Because things prevail and dominate the multitude, all dreams have become aborted, life has become detached from one’s dreams.
In this way, the Bourgeois class continues to abort our dreams, reducing people and their freedom to units, and then reducing our very becoming into that of becoming a thing.
On Solar Economics
Solar economics do not start from a point of scarcity but rather one of excess (this is what Bataille uses to disrupt most economic epistemologies as most start from a point of scarcity).
Bataille gives a great summary of what the “Solar Economy” is (for clarification see: On Solar Economics/Thinkers on this Topic/Bataille/Quotes)
Thinkers on this Topic:
Bataille:Quotes:
“The radiation of the sun is distinguished by its unilateral character: it loses itself without reckoning, without counterpart. Solar economy is founded upon this principle” (Bataille 10).
“It is because the sun squanders itself upon us without return that ‘The sum of energy of energy produced is always superior to that which was necessary to its production’ since ‘we are ultimately nothing but an effect of the sun’” (Bataille 9–10).
“The world… is sick with wealth” (Bataille 15).
Land:Quotes:
“Excess or surplus always precedes production, work, seriousness, exchange, and lack. Need is never given, it must be constructed out of luxuriance” (Land 23).
On Keynesian Economics
Keynesian Economics isn’t in the Interests of the Proletariat (Marxian Economics.)
Keynesian economics holds that capitalism can be controlled by governments to function in the interest of all. Any understanding of Marxian economics shows this to be false.
Capitalism is a class system, based on the exploitation of the working class, which can only function by putting profits before human needs.
The idea that a state capitalist economy could function in the interest of all is equally illusory.
Keynesian Economics = Eventual Collapse (Zizek)
Keynes’ favorite maxim is that in the long term we are all dead.
The paradox of keynesian economics is that our borrowing from the future, i.e. our printing of money can bring about real effects (such as growth but also collapse).
[NOTE: Settling accounts means reimbursing the credits, abolishing the “borrowing from the future.”]
“Keynes concedes that the moment of some final “settling of accounts” would be a catastrophe, that the entire system would collapse” (Zizek 43).
The art of economic politics is to prolong the game and to postpone ad infinitum the moment of final settlement.
Marxian monetarists hold against Keynes that sometime, sooner or later, the moment will arrive when we actually have to “settle accounts,” reimburse debts and place the system on its proper foundations.
Resources:
On Marxian Economics
Theory of Profit
Profit comes from surplus-labor.
Surplus labor — labor expended in the work day whose value is above the value of the necessary labor expended in order to maintain the existence of said laborer (worker).
Profit CAN ONLY be MATERIALLY explained as coming from the unequal relations of production in capitalism.
On the Psychoanalytical
On Consumerism
Consumers leads to Unhappiness (Lacan & Baudrillard)
Desire and enjoyment are also political factors.
Lacan connects an economic analysis of the good(s) with power relations, and he says, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, “The good is at the level where a subject may have it at his disposal. The domain of the good is the birth of power . . . To exercise control over one’s goods, as everyone knows, entails a certain disorder, that reveals its true nature, i.e. is to have the right to deprive others from them” (Lacan 229).
Consumerism is governed by the metonymy of desire: “The morality of power, of the service of good is as follows: ‘As far as desires are concerned come back later, make them wait’” (Lacan 315).
Any administration of enjoyment “demands and presupposes a certain social organization, a hierarchy, which is in turn supported only by the belief in the supposed supreme enjoyment at the centre” (Dolar xvii).
So we can see that we have a tripartite pact connecting the economy (capitalist market economy), inter-subjective desire (a particular socio-cultural administration of desire), and power (a particular power regime).
Consumerism and advertising, together, constitute the symptomatic element which holds together economy, desire, power. They are the element — related to enjoyment — which knots together our present economic, cultural, and political structures.
Consumer Society is a society of commanded enjoyment. The only duty today is in enjoying oneself as much as possible.
Once mass production and consumer culture emerges we turn to the command to enjoy.
“The status of a whole civilization changes along with the way in which its everyday objects make themselves present and the way they are enjoyed” (Baudrillard 172).
In Consumer Society, “duty is transformed into a duty to enjoy, which is precisely the commandment of the superego” (McGowan 34).
“The seemingly innocent and benevolent call to ‘enjoy!’ — as in ‘Enjoy Coca-Cola!’ — embodies the violent dimension of an irresistible commandment” (Stravrakakis).
Consumerism directs us towards predetermined channels of behavior.
From a view-point of psychoanalysis, the administration of enjoyment and the structuration of desire are always implicated in the social bond.
Every consumer society has to come to terms with the impossibility of attaining jouissance.
In every consumer society, there is a impossibility of realizing the fantasy: “The fundamental thing to recognize about the society of enjoyment is that in it the pursuit of enjoyment has misfired: the society of enjoyment has no provided the enjoyment that it promises” (McGowan 7).
The command to enjoy is really nothing more than “a more nuanced form of prohibition” (Stavrakakis).
The command to enjoy is nothing more than a more advanced form of power.
On Market Actors
Market Actors are not Rational
To be a rational market actor you have to do a few impossible things:
- One must have perfect knowledge of one’s own psyche
- This means that there would have to be no unconscious and no repressed desire
- This means that the first requirement to be a rational market actor is impossible as a lack of an unconscious means that there is no consciousness or even subjectivity altogether
- One must be able to interact with the Lacanian Real to achieve perfect rationality
- This is impossible as it is impossible to interact with the Real
This means that the requirements to be a rational market actor aren’t achievable.
On the Political
On Revolution
Revolution = Bourgeois (leads to re-entrenchment of Capitalism)
The Bourgeois Class revolted against Feudal Sovereignty and Sovereign Consumption in favor of Accumulation.
[NOTE: “to act sovereignly is to privilege the present over the past or future” (Wendling). Sovereign Consumption is consumption which exceeds a productive, work driven economy — it can be seen as non-coercive play or pleasure.]
Revolution is a bourgeois concept.
The driving force of revolution is Nietzschean resentment. This resentment makes post-revolutionary subjects demonize and resent their desires. This creates the denial of sovereignty and sovereign consumption — this means a bourgeois revolution recurs.
“When the proletarian worker comes to power, a bourgeois revolution recurs because this mass worker, the slave ascendant, forever operates in an economy of scarcity: hoarding resources from the memory of being deprived. The problem of accumulation begins again” (Wendling).
This means that revolution only re-entrenches capitalism.
Titled: For a Critique of [REDACTED]
“We would like to see a functional squandering everywhere so as to bring about symbolic destruction” (Baudrillard 94).
1. Introduction
To start, this is a task of squandering, of expenditure! A quest of putting excess into glorious explosion, or rather cold implosion. For one to knock down the ivory tower much has to be done. So, like many before me, I must ask the question that has spawned revolutions and insurrections… What is to be done? Now that those old words, which feel so distant, far away, almost even lost to us, have been spoken, we must answer them.
It is ironic, I must say, that I am writing a critique of [REDACTED] on my school assigned chromebook, during my free period, at [REDACTED] High School, at the time of writing this paragraph.
This will be an attempt at a complete critique and analysis of [REDACTED]. Not only will we be analyzing the bourgeois surface of the ivory tower that is bourgeois society in [REDACTED], but also the ‘undercommons’ of this society.
Let’s begin!
2. An Attempt at a Critique of the Total System that is [REDACTED] High School
We will be looking at the internment camp that is high school. We will be looking at its prisoners (or “students”) which are forced to produce human capital, forced to partake in capitalist knowledge production, indoctrinated by bourgeois ideology, and are condemned to social death. Students are zombified. We are trained like dogs; trained to work with deadlines, trained to work, trained to obey, trained to memorize, etc. Our teenage years are lost to coerced labor, stress, psychological pressure and trauma, and knowledge production for the University.
Now I want to comment here, we are mature enough in highschool to have relationships with one another, so my rejection of the University isn’t because we are too young or immature. My rejection of the University is an ethical rejection. Should (as in a question of morals) we be subjected to the site of social death which is the University? I say no.
2.2. A Critique of the Student Government Association
To quote Jean Baudrillard,
Why this feeling of loathing for the politician? Is it the impression of being artificially subjected to a will . . . which, by its very function, has to be crude? How can the decision-making function be performed without simplifying the mechanisms of thought? Political charisma is . . . an ungracious will which derives its power and its glory from voluntary servitude. (Baudrillard 229)
This is to be a critique of the SGA, though to clarify, this piece has no animosity behind it, rather apathy towards everyday life within [REDACTED].
3. A Critique of the City of [REDACTED]
“The city is a semiotic factory” (Worker).
The city constitutes “the ghetto of television and advertising, the ghetto of consumers and the consumed, of readers read in advance, encoded decoders of every message, those circulating in, and circulated by, the subway, leisure-time entertainers and the entertained, etc” (Baudrillard 77).
Work(s) Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. Edited by Mark Poster, Stanford University Press, 2001.
Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death, London: Sage Publications, 1993.
Worker. The University, Social Death and the Inside Joke, Anarchistnews.org, 18 Feb. 2010, web.archive.org/web/20171111131003/anarchistnews.org/content/university-social-death-and-inside-joke.
Titled: For a Ruthless Critique of Everything
1. Definitions
Social Death — “our banal acceptance of an institution’s meaning for our own lack of meaning. It’s the positions we thoughtlessly enact. It’s the particular nature of being owned” (Anti-Capital Projects).
Biopower — a technology of power for “the administration of bodies and the calculated management of life” (Foucault 136).
Labor Power — Is not a form of power, rather, “it is a definition, an axiom, and its ‘real’ operation in the labor process, its ‘use-value’, is only the reduplication of this definition in the operation of the code” (Baudrillard 13).
Social Rupture — “the initial divorce between the owners and the owned” (Anti-Capital Projects).
2. For a Critique of [REDACTED] High School
“Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. UC President Mark Yudof” (Anti-Capital Projects). Though not university, high school is also very much a cemetery. Unlike a cemetery though, in high school “there are no dirges, no prayers, only the repeated testing of our threshold for anxiety, humiliation, and debt” (Anti-Capital Projects).
2.1. High School or the Factory?
High school is a factory. It is an apparatus which reproduces socially dead subjects (students). Students become socially dead as they accept the school’s illusory and hyperreal “meaning”. High school is a machine which proliferates biopowered technologies of death.
2.2. The Classroom
“The classroom just like the workplace… manages our social death, translating what we once knew from high school, from work, from our family life into academic parlance, into acceptable forms of social conflict” (Anti-Capital Projects).
Classrooms are the individual cells of the body that is high school. They are the individual workers in the factory of high school. The labor power in this situation is of course the student’s social deaths.
2.3. The Plane of Neutralization
“We attend lecture after lecture… and all the while power weaves the invisible nets which contain and neutralize all thought and action, that bind the revolution inside books, lecture halls” (Anti-Capital Project).
When adults have been going through their slow death of capitalism for so long, can they really be a revolutionary vehicle? No, they cannot be revolutionary. They have already died and been zombified a thousand times over. But let us look towards the youth; how will they fair? Not well either. As the youth enter the university (college) they have already been broken by the system. So this is the issue. What do we do? What can we do? Is it really plausible for a bunch of high school students to start a revolution? The last memorable student uprising, or for that matter, memorable anti-capitalist event, was obviously May 68’. It failed. Maybe the failure of the May 68’ student uprisings attest to the idea that once in the lecture halls of the university, students are sucked dry by capitalism.
Works Cited
Anti-Capital Projects. The Necrosocial, Anti-Capital Projects, 18 Nov. 2009, https://anticapitalprojects.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/the-necrosocial/.
Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. London, Sage Publications, 1993.
Camatte, Jacques. Against Domestication. Kitchener, Falling Sky Books, 1973.
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality. New York, Vintage Books, 1990.
Worker. The University, Social Death and the Inside Joke, anarchistnews.org, 18 Feb. 2010, http://anarchistnews.org/content/university-social-death-and-inside-joke.
Titled: For a Radical Critique
1. An Outline
The goal of this paper is nothing less than a complete ‘potlatch’ of thinkers, fields, and radicality, and then a subsequent champion. The question of this paper is, “who has the most radical and extreme thought?” This can be one instance of a thinker’s thought such as a book or an essay, or it can be the entire thinker’s thought. Let us begin.
2. Fields of Thought
What will we consider worthwhile? What fields of study are important? Let us make a list.
2.1. Economics
Obviously, the first person that comes to mind is Karl Marx. He will be our starting point to gauge radicality, i.e. who is more radical than Marx in the field of economics, and who is more radical than that person more radical than Marx, ad Infinitum.
So, who is more radical than Marx in the field of economics? Some may say, Keynes but let us not kid ourselves. We can look toward Emile Durkheim and Jean Baudrillard as those more radical than Marx. We can have our first chain of thinkers begin with Emile Durkheim.
From Durkheim, we can move to Marcel Mauss, who in The Gift, posits gift-exchange as that which is radically other to the capitalist mode of exchange. From Mauss, we can move to Georges Bataille. Bataille further radicalizes Marcel Mauss’ concept of the gift in his work The Accursed Share (Volume I, II, III). Not only does he prove himself as more radical than Mauss but he also forwards the most radical critique of the principle of scarcity. Here at the end of the first chain of thinkers, we stand here with the Jean Baudrillard of Symbolic Exchange and Death, and Georges Bataille of The Accursed Share (Volumes I, II, III). Now it would be easy to say that Baudrillard is more radical in economics and be done with it. But is this really the case? Is Baudrillard really more radical than Bataille in the field of economics? I would say yes and no. Some of Baudrillard’s work in Symbolic Exchange and Death is still stuck within restrictive economic analysis, where Bataille, having a general economic analysis, would go beyond him. But William Pawlett’s interpretation of Baudrillard radicalizes him. Pawlett’s interpretation of Baudrillard’s thesis of symbolic exchange, I would say goes beyond Bataille’s thesis of the general economy. But beyond both, I situate Jean-Francios Lyotard of Libidinal Economy and Deleuze and Guattari of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.
Titled: The Libidinal: An Attempt at a Revival
Introduction
This is an attempt at a revival of the (libidinal) economic theory of Lyotard. I will be refuting critiques of Lyotard’s libidinal economics, as to position Lyotard and his theories in the position of ‘the true’ (as Lyotard would call it). I still search for ‘the true’ and so I will be recognizing the mistakes of Lyotard, in which attempts at reconciliation (with the opposing theory), (subsequent) synthesis (of Lyotard’s theory and the opposing theory), and then (subsequent) defence of those syntheses will be made.
O’ but this is not only an attempt at a revival of the culmination of ‘the Libidinal’ which is Lyotard (in his ‘libidinal period’) but also ‘the Libidinal’ all together. What does this entail? It entails a large defence against only a few authors who dared to converse with the theorists of ‘the Libidinal’.
This will also be a ‘potlatch’ of the libidinal theorists. Setting them “against” one another in an exchange of arguments, hypotheses, critiques, truths, etc.
Let us begin!
1. A Consummation with Marx
1.1 On the Law of Value
How would one go about proving the Law of Value (i.e. the Labor Theory of Value)? Will we go through every argument in defense and against it? Will we go through piles and piles of Austrian and Keynesian shit, in order for it to be un-opposed? No! We will use Freudian psychoanalysis to make this quick (in terms of puns of libidinality, I want to say quickie), as I do care if the Law of Value is true or not, as Lyotard is not looking for ‘the true’.
We repeat Lyotard’s axiom that every libidinal economy is a political economy and vice versa. How would one justify such a claim? Quite simply. Look towards Marx’s labor-power and Freud’s libido; “both are energetic plenitudes subject to similar systems of regulation” (Sim 129). So, what are these systems of regulation? The first of the two systems of regulation is, in terms of Libido/libidinal economy, Freud’s principle of constancy. So what would be its parallel in terms of the political economy? I would propose Marx’s Law of Value. In terms of comparison of these systems of regulation, “both… reduce the intensity of energy through a leveling equalization” (Sim 129).
2. Desire, Deleuze, and Dissimulation
2.1 On Desire
Deleuze and Guattari see the unconscious as desiring-machines. Social or economic production is desiring-production; “the libido invests the forces of economic production directly, without any sort of mediation or transformation” (Deleuze and Guattari 24).
What we can take from their analysis of the unconscious is the cue, which Lyotard took. Lyotard takes this cue from Deleuze and Guattari, and says, “the libido never fails to invest regions, and it doesn’t invest under the rubric of lack and appropriation. It invests without condition” (Lyotard 4). What does this say about the nature of the libido? It tells us the libido, which I assume to be libidinal drives, is not created by lack, nor by appropriation. This, obviously in the context of where Lyotard got his cue from (that being Deleuze and Guattari), makes libidinal drives closer to Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of an affirmative desire.
3. Semiotics: A Religious Nihilism
Lyotard sees semiotics as constituting the substitution of the materiality of things with sign. Now, this would be “fine” (I guess), if the sign had a subsequent signification, but Lyotard raises an objection to this semiotic logic. Lyotard says the sign does not lead to subsequent signification but instead, “to a metonymic system whereby signification is always deferred — hence to the infinite ‘postponement of the signifier.’” (Cooper and Murphy 197).
3.1 The Hyperreal
4. Are we with or against Capitalism?
We are against capitalism! To quote Stuart Sim, “Lyotard sees capitalism as deeply duplicitous because, while the desires are dampened by the law of value… this very law acts as an expedient to the circulation of desires in the system and the seeking out and production of new intensities” (Sim 129).
Works Cited
Cooper, Brian P., and Margueritte S. Murphy. “‘Libidinal Economics’: Lyotard and Accounting for the Unaccountable.” The New Economic Criticism, Routledge, 2009, pp. 196–207.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Lyotard Jean-François, and Iain Hamilton. Grant. Libidinal Economy. Bloomsbury Academic an Imprint of Bloomsbury, 2015.
Sim, Stuart. The Lyotard Dictionary. University Press, 2013.
Titled: Eternal Recurrence
It was past 3 am. Darkness had enveloped the world. Alone in my room, I, in my loneliest of loneliness, turned to the Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche. I picked up my copy of The Portable Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche. I turned to page 101. I felt the smooth yet also oddly grainy paper, as my hand touched page 101. Not reading the words, I just looked at them. These words are so small and insignificant printed, yet propose something so great. I looked at the top of the page, a poem from The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche.
“Poem 341… The greatest weight,” I quietly read aloud.
Nietzsche is my demon. He came to tell me of those words so full of blight. I began to read the first of Nietzsche’s accursed words: “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you:” I paused my reading and glanced around. I was unsure if I should read the unhallowed words of a demon. I gulped and continued to read. I let the demon say his damned words of weight, “‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you in the same succession and sequence-” I stopped reading to ponder the radical potentiality of such an original proposition. Never had I heard such audacious words spoken. My mouth is dry; I had not drank anything for a few hours. Water would be like Dionysian ambrosia to my mouth. I went back to the page and continued my triumphant descent into a place beyond good and evil. In that place of greatness, I began to read Nietzsche’s call, “The eternal hourglass of existence turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine” (Nietzsche 101–102). Indeed, never had I heard such a question. I, awestruck, laid back against the hard wooden frame of my bed. I felt changed.
“What would I do?” I whispered aloud.
I tried to discern an answer. I began to contemplate such an irrational and radical proposition.
“Every moment of pain? Again and again, always the same? How could I affirm such torture?” I thought to myself.
The thought of living this all again, and not eventually returning to the divine state of non-existence, frightened me.
“No, not affirming. Not extracting happiness from pain. Nor gaining joy. Nietzsche is not condemning me to masochism. He would not condemn a mighty free-spirit!” I rationalized.
I kept thinking; seconds felt like minutes.
“It is loving! Loving my fate!” I said aloud.
The meaning of eternal return — that is, reliving my life, again and again, and loving it — is what transformed me. It is what comforts me, even in my darkest times of anguish. It does not turn pain into pleasure. It made me appreciate the immanence of hardship, not wish for it. It is a thought so mighty that it turns all that has happened to me into that which I chose, that which I willed! I have not been the same since I read those of hallowed words. Amor Fati.
Work Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Walter Kaufmann. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books, 1976.
October
Titled: On (Georges) Bataille and Personal Essays
Sur (Georges) Bataille et les essais personnels
How sweet terror is, not a single line, or a ray of morning sunlight fails to contain the sweetness of anguish.
- Georges Bataille, À perte de vue
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Furiously Bataillean
PART ONE: RÉPARATION À BATAILLE
Bataille et les Fascistes: Une Réparation
Acéphalous Politics
PREFACE
Furiously Bataillean
Bataille. Battle. There is a bit of irony in that Georges Bataille’s last name translates into battle, in light of the fact that Bataille says in Acéphale №5, “JE SUIS MOI-MÊME LA GUERRE” (Bataille 22), “I MYSELF AM WAR” (Bataille 239).
What does it mean to be ‘Bataillean’? Can one be Bataillean? Should one take Bataillean as ‘of Bataille’, in which we then must ask, can one be of Bataille? I would say that of course one can be of Bataille. These essays I am writing on Georges Bataille are Bataillean, but at the same time, no one as of yet has ‘heard the true voice of Bataille’ just as Bataille believed that no one had heard the true voice of Nietzsche, at least not until he had (Harcourt et al.). This is the goal of these essays on Bataille. It is to hear the true voice of Bataille, just as he made it the goal of his public review, Acéphale, to hear the true voice of Nietzsche (Harcourt et al.). Bataille, while a part of Acéphale, intended to make a Nietzsche which is unusable, that is unable to be recuperated (Galletti 115–116); Bataille and the rest of Acéphale, were to make Nietzsche’s thought, a “thought that remains comically unemployable, open only to those inspired by the void” (Bataille 6). I too intend to do the same with Bataille. I intend to make Bataille(‘s thought) unable to be recuperated. After the repair of Bataille, I will look at his philosophy, economics, politics, etc. I will have to answer, most likely in a later chapter, the performative contradiction. Then I will carry out Bataillean critiques and other stuff.
PART ONE: RÉPARATION À BATAILLE
Bataille et les Fascistes: Une Réparation
Acéphalous Politics
Bataille is not a fascist (though we will explore the idea of a Bataillean fascism later on in this section). Bataille’s thought is headless, acéphalous. His thought is therefore unable to be fascist. Bataille’s politics, if we can even derive any from him (we will definitely try later on), cannot have a leader, a head.
PART TWO: BATAILLE AND ECONOMICS
A Bataillean Theory of Value?
What does Bataille have to offer to value theory, if anything at all? We can first notice the general (chronological) order of the change in the variable amount of value, for Bataille it is after an event. This event could be sacrifice, potlatch, maybe socially necessary labor time (to reference Marx, who we will look at later on in this section). The questions we must then ask are, firstly: is there a decrease in value after an event, or an increase in value, or is its variable change situational to the event? Then we must ask, secondly: what already theorized theories of value are in accordance to our answer to our first question?
The Question of the Change in Value
To answer the first question, we will turn to the analysis of Konstantinos Retsikas and Magnus Marsden. In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (3), Retsikas and Marsden identify a creation (generation) of (greater) value (than before), after an event of the destruction of value. They look towards the Aztec practice of sacrifice, the Alaskan Amerindian practice of potlatch, and the surplus excess produced by the chemical reactions of life. They go on to say, “from the surpluses produced by life’s… chemical reactions to the sacrifices of the… Aztecs and the potlatch of Alaska’s Amerindans… value is actively destroyed and transfigured on a mass scale as a prelude to the generation of even greater value” (Retsikas and Marsden 601). Though, they may not be talking about the value of a commodity being generated via an event, it can certainly be noted that, so far, Bataille has a principle of excess/surplus, that is to say, we can identify that after an event there is more value than before the event.
The Marxian Labor Theory of Value and Bataille
Does Bataille follow Marx in maintaining the position of a labor theory of value? That is to say, does Bataille believe the exchange-value of a commodity is relative to and determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time required for the production of the commodity?
Marx identifies that for something to be a commodity it requires a use-value and an exchange-value. The use-value of a commodity is the commodity’s usefulness in satisfying some sort of need. Marx’s labor theory of value looks at the exchange-value of a commodity not the commodity’s use-value. A commodity needs to be able to be exchanged for another commodity to have an exchange-value. The implication of this fact is “there must be some abstract, quantitative form of equivalence that can mediate the exchange between any two commodities with qualitatively different use values” (Lamarche 57). Marx would say that we can read the exchange-value of a commodity as the quantity of socially necessary labor-time. Marx also believed that “value is created by labor power alone” (Lamarche 57). This means that before we can even see if Bataille accepts the labor theory of value, we must first see if Bataille even recognizes these two forms of value.
PART THREE: BATAILLE AND PHILOSOPHY
Bataille and Ethics
“Morality is the stra
Further Investigations into Bataille and Ethics
“Bataille’s summit where evil… is good and good… is evil” (Evangelou 63).
Bataille’s Radical Ethics of Death: How Ought We to Die?
“Ethics in general works from a schematization within the realm of project that presupposes stable and fixed subjects, in some cases even transcendental subject” (Robbins 17–18). Ethical frameworks are “conceptual frameworks regarding how one ought and ought not treat another — what one should and should not do, to, for, and with another” (Robbins 18).
Thus, with a general idea of what ethics are, our Bataillean critique of ethics begins!
Most ethics try to answer the question of “‘how ought we to live?’” (Robbins 17), but Bataille’s ethics start with another question: “‘How ought we to die?’” (Robbins 18). This is the question we Batailleans must ask and answer.
To give Bataillean ethics grounding and validity, our central privileging of death over life must be substantiated. Most ethics presuppose, as Robbins said earlier, “stable and fixed subjects” (Robbins 18). This presupposition that ethics makes is the very problem of non-Bataillean ethics (from here on, I will refer to non-Bataillean ethics as just ethics, and when I talk about Bataille’s ethics I will just refer to them as Bataillean ethics). Ethics presupposes selves. This is where ethics’ privileging of life over death becomes unstable and open to relentless Bataillean critique. The instability of ethics comes from the very fact that “only selves can live” (Robbins 18), where “the dead do nothing” (Robbins 18). Bataille is not saying we should all commit suicide, as “only living subjects can experience death” (Robbins 18). By death Bataille does not mean biological death, but death as death of the self. This is to say, death of the self is “the loss of self in death, in ecstasy, in communication” (Robbins 18). For Bataille, the death of the self exists in sovereignty.
Bataille’s moral obligation for the subject is one ought to “lacerate oneself, to lose oneself, to open oneself up to the proximity of violence, laceration, and death and in that space experience ecstasy, the bliss of death” (Robbins 20). At the same time, Bataille undoes ethics. He undoes ethics by changing the very question of ethics of “how ought one live?” to “how ought one die?” Bataille undoes all of ethics by privileging, or as Robbins says, “elevating death over life (which is always already defined by discourse and project)” (Robbins 20). For ethics to try and answer the question of “‘how ought one live?’ requires one to go beyond the bliss of annihilation” (Robbins 21).
The Limit of Ethics
Now that we have established that the limit of ethics is the death/loss of the self, we can continue with our look at Bataillean ethics.
Ethics is Project and Answering the Performative Contradiction
Ethics is stuck within what Bataille calls the “project,” which allows us to make further Bataillean attacks against ethics. Stephen S. Bush defines Bataille’s idea of project as:
“Project” is a term of art for Bataille. It is not just a particular endeavor, but a whole mode of existence. Something that is project has a teleological orientation: its activities are directed toward some good(s) or end(s) and people employ instruments and instrumental rationality to achieve the end(s). Norms and authorities are involved in project, necessarily, for there are proper and improper ways to pursue an end, and there are individuals to whom, and rules to which, people defer as they pursue the end. (Bush 314)
If one could use Bataille to critique and undo project then this would also be a critique and undoing of ethics. But before we can even critique or undo project, we must address and get out of the performative contradiction that is the critical question of “is having the undoing of project as an end with a means of critique not also to be teleologically within project?”
Transgression
Bataille transgresses moral systems.
Bataille’s Meta-Ethics
Bataille’s meta-ethics is an undoing of all ethics. Bataille’s meta-ethics are an attempt to show how ethics is “subservient to a greater power than they sought to describe” (Rousselle 251). Bataille critiques all ethics which have the subject as the locus of ethics. He does this by pointing out the fact that the subject is “subordinate to general state power” (Rousselle 251). The implication of Bataille’s critique is not having the subject as the locus of ethics, and the starting point for ethical activity, which means that there are no ethical acts.
A Bataillean Critique of Max Stirner and his Ilk
When going back to Bataille’s critique of the subject as the starting point of ethics, we see a parallel to Stirner, in that we see the subject is nothing. For Stirner the subject is the creative nothing. Whereas Bataille’s sovereign subject is nothing.
Stirner retains the subject as the starting point for ethics. Stirner shouts, “I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself create everything as creator” (Stirner 16). This is where Stirner falls. Bataille’s subject is sovereign. Bataille’s sovereign subject “is grounded upon the nothingness of pure exteriority” (Rousselle 252). Bataille points out that sovereignty already exists. We are all sovereign subjects, but we hinder our sovereignty through a multitude of things which Bataille identifies. This means that at the basis of all subjectivity is sovereignty.
This is where the critique of Stirner starts. Because at the basis of subjectivity is sovereignty and sovereign subjects cannot be reduced down to the unique (or the ego whichever you prefer in the context of Stirner), then Stirner’s subject of the unique, the basis of his whole philosophy, falls.
PART FOUR: BATAILLE AND THE POLITICAL
Bataille’s Post-Left Anarchism
“Bataille’s version of anarchism rejects accretions of authority — all authority” (Goldhammer 17–18).
Bataille is an anarchist. His anarchism is like no other. It is beyond classification as individualist or collectivist. It is unlike the classical European anarchism of Kropotkin, Bakunin, or Proudhon.
Bataille’s anarchism is created out of Bataille’s opposition to exploitation and his unrivaled pursuit of freedom.
Bataille, unlike almost all other anarchists, rejects Enlightenment ideology. His anarchism is not of humanism.
Bataille’s anarchism, like de Sade, Nietzsche, and Stirner’s, is not structured and regulated by morality or ethics. Following de Sade, Nietzsche, and Stirner once more, Bataille wants us to live our lives not subordinated to abstractions.
Bataille’s anarchism is post-left. Bataille rejects (sacrifices) the left.
Bataille’s Acephalous Communities
Bataille’s Acephalous/Headless Communities are organized around that which repules the members of the community: “abjection generated by sacrificial loss” (Goldhammer 18).
When looking at classical European anarchists, none proposed such a radical form of community as did Georges Bataille. Bakunin’s (anarcho-)collectivism, Kropotkin’s mutual aid, Proudhon’s worker associations, etc. are all nothing more than idealistic Enlightenment humanism.
Bataille and State Hegemony
Bataille sees liberalism, fascism, and marxist-leninism as all predicated on the subordination of the working class, as well as sick with the disease of state hegemony.
Bataille would have us, proletarians, hate the authority of the State. Bataille’s sovereign subject would bow to no authority — it is subversive.
Bataille recognizes that the liberation of the proletariat necessitates the end of exploitation and therefore also requires the end of the bourgeoisie, who are the exploiters.
Bataille and Democracy
Bataille, Democracy, and the Sacred
Are Bataille’s (Headless) anarchist communities direct democracies? Are they some other form of democracy? What are Bataille’s thoughts on democracy?
Democracy, in its contemporary forms, is sick with the ills of capitalism and infected with individualism. But it only worsens its chronically diseased state of sickness.
Democracy, just like fascism and bureaucratic attempts at communism, has the issue of state sovereignty. It is this inherent state sovereignty that dooms democracy from the start.
Barend Kiefte recognizes two types of Bataille’s idea of sovereignty: state sovereignty which he defines as “an authority related to human interests and needs” (Kiefte 80), and then there is sacred sovereignty which he defines as “an authority outside of all human interests and needs” (Kiefte 80).
Our striving, as Batailleans, for sacred sovereignty would make us search for something beyond state sovereignty, this is to say that we are following Bataille in his “search for something other than profane politics, outside of humanity, which is found in the dimension of the sacred” (Kiefte 81). Politics are superseded by the sacred.
Bataille’s acephalous communities are atheological. Whereas communities based upon politics such as fasicsm, bureaucracy, democracy are theological. This is because of the fact that political movements all lead to the same type of community, that is a closed community. Whereas Bataille’s headless communities are open communities. Closed communities are unitary communities which have a single head. This single head of closed communities is what makes them theological, as this head is ultimately that of God. We see, again, Bataille’s headless communities in stark contrast to closed/unitary communities, as Bataille’s headless communities are open communities. Open communities are Universal communities. Bataille’s headless communities are atheological, in that they cut off the head, and become acephalous communities. The implication of this fact is that Bataille’s acephalous communities can only be achieved after the death of God.
Bataille on Democracy
Bataille sees democracy as the “worst form of political organization, because it atrophies heterogeneity under homogeneity” (Kiefte 90).
Democracy for Bataille is an attempt to stabilize the chaotic forces of life. We can see this in democracy’s attempt to establish the equality of individuals under the law (Kiefte 90).
The possibility of revolution is lowest under democracy. Bataille recognizes that the unlikelihood of a revolution under democracy is because of democracy’s aforementioned attempt at stabilization of the chaotic nature of life.
Bataille and the United States Election of 2020
At the time of writing this sentence it is 8:32 A.M. Central Time, on Friday, October 23rd, 2020. Election day proper (I say proper because there is early voting) is on November 3rd, 2020 which is 11 days away. The purpose of this section is to analyze Bataille in relation to ideas of electoralism, voting, the State, etc. as well as formulating Bataillean positions and critiques on the subjects at hand.
So, let’s begin Batailleans!
Bataille, Politics, and Silence
What are we to do? Which party are we voting for? It’s 10:11 A.M. on Tuesday, October 27th, 2020. The United States Presidential Election of 2020 is 7 days away, one week. In these crucial times we must ask a question which comes before the question of ‘who do we vote for?’ The question I’m speaking of is the question: ‘do we even vote?’
Does Bataille have a political position? The answer, not surprisingly, is no. For Bataille, “the power of life and the reality of the street cannot be accommodated into political positions” (Kiefte 51). This precludes us Batailleans from voting only one party. Does this not also preclude us from making political decisions, which necessitate, by the very nature of those actions, that we explicitly or implicitly make a (political) positional statement, and therefore take a (political) position? I think one could say yes, and that answering yes to the latter question is a truth standing on the face of contradiction. It is a very Bataillean yes.
You may have already noticed the issue with my aforementioned answer to the previously asked question. The positional statement we make when we say yes, is at the very least a meta-political positional statement, and at the most a political positional statement. This is the (performative?) contradiction we stand on. The implications of this contradiction makes us retreat to the very Bataillean (non?)position of silence.
A Bataillean Critique of Voting as (Rational?) Decision Making
Bataille’s Rejection of Politicians and Representation
Bataille rejects politicians as he wants humans to go to the realm of the sacred which is beyond representation by the state and therefore politicians.
Can One Resist the State under a Democracy through Voting?: A Bataillean Perspective
“Bataille thinks that resistance to heads… comes from without rather than within democracy, because the protest against unitarism cannot arise in a unitary community” (Kiefte 90).
PART FIVE: BATAILLE AND THEOLOGY
God, nevertheless, is a hooker.
- Georges Bataille, Negative Ecstasies
Keeping God Dead: Bataille and the Reestablishment of Atheism
Is God dead?
PART SIX: ESSAYS ON SOLAR ECONOMICS
The pressure of life is as a steam kettle, always at the edge of exploding.
- Asger Sørensen, On a universal scale: Economy in Bataille’s general economy
The Axioms of Solar Economics
Bataille’s ‘Solar Economics’ has at its basis two fundamental axioms:
Axiom 1
The first axiom of solar economics is explained by Nick Land as follows:
Axiom 1: “The radiation of the sun is distinguished by its unilateral character: it loses itself without reckoning, without counterpart. Solar economy is founded upon this principle” (Land 33).
Axiom 2
The second axiom of solar economics is explained by Land as follows:
Axiom 2: “It is because the sun squanders itself upon us without return that ‘The sum of energy produced is always superior to that which was necessary to its production’… since ‘we are ultimately nothing but an effect of the sun’” (Land 33).
Restricted Economy, General Economy
The basis of Bataille’s idea of the general economy is founded upon the two axioms laid out above. From there general economy asserts the truth that “all particular activity on earth is a moment or modulation of the cosmic movements and transformations of superabundant energy — in our case, solar energy” (Snediker 23–24).
The perspective of restricted economy sees scarcity, economic necessity, lack. Contrary to restricted economy, the perspective of general economy sees no such lack, but rather an abundance of energy.
From the perspective of general economy, lack is not a pre-existing (material/transcendental) condition, rather lack is a product. Bataille is not trying to deny lack as a reality, as scarcity is real as there are those in poverty, but rather he is trying to reveal that lack is only a reality from the perspective of restricted economy. This is not to say that when one views economics from a general perspective, poverty and scarcity disappears. We must also realize that Bataille is not saying that both restricted and general perspectives are both true and we can look from either or but rather that “general economy is the truth of restricted economy” (Snediker 27).
PART SEVEN: BATAILLE ON LOVE
In just a Glance
“The seductive eye is the eye that meets another eye in the look of love… This joining together of eyes in a look seeks out the truth of love in the eye of another, and in that eye is found either the confirmation of a returned love or the ruin of the refusal of love. The eye is the organ of truth through the clarity of the look, we discover the truth or falsity of love in the look” (Noys 29).
Death and Ecstasy
“When ecstasy is reached, when lovers are ‘beside themselves’ in an almost literal sense, human mortality is pursued to the point that it becomes, momentarily, a matter of indifference… In ecstasy, death ceases to matter; in a sense, the lovers have already died, and in the ecstatic state being moves beyond death” (Pawlett 73).
PART EIGHT: BATAILLE AND VALUE THEORY
“It seems to me entirely coherent to say that surplus value is the form that Bataille’s excess takes in a capitalist society” (Shaviro).
PART NINE: PERSONAL ESSAYS
It is 10:23 PM 11/11/2020
Capitalism is a machine which hollows out those who are put into it.
Bibliography
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share, Volume 1: Consumption. Translated by Robert Hurley, Zone Books, 1991.
Bataille, Georges. Acéphale №5. Acéphale, 1939.
Bataille, Georges. On Nietzsche. Translated by Stuart Kendall, SUNY Press, 2015.
Bataille, Georges. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939. Edited by Allan Stoekl, University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Bataille, Georges, and André S. Labarthe. “À perte de vue.” Youtube, Amip-France 3, 30 April 1997, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaRXE9fZL8. Accessed 11 November 2020.
Bush, Stephen S. “THE ETHICS OF ECSTASY: Georges Bataille and Amy Hollywood on Mysticism, Morality, and Violence.” Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 39, no. 2, 2011, pp. 299–320. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23020031?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.
Evangelou, Angelos. “Georges Bataille’s ‘Ethics of Violence.’” Skepski, vol. 3, no. 2, 2010, pp. 51–64. Georges Bataille’s ‘Ethics of Violence’ — Kent Academic Repository, https://kar.kent.ac.uk/69042/1/vol-3.2-5-Evangelou.pdf.
Galletti, Marina, and Alastair Brotchie. “Commentaries II.” The Sacred Conspiracy: The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology, Atlas Press, 2018, pp. 115–119.
Goldhammer, Jesse. “Dare to Know, Dare to Sacrifice: Georges Bataille and the Crisis of the Left.” Reading Bataille Now, Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. 15–34.
Harcourt, Bernard, et al. “2/13: Georges Bataille.” Nietzsche 13/13, Columbia University, 22 September 2016, http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/nietzsche1313/2-13/.
Kiefte, Barend. The Anarchist Concept of Community in the Thought of Bataille, Blanchot and Nancy. McMaster University, 2002.
Lamarche, Pierre. “The Use Value of G. A. M. V. Bataille.” Reading Bataille Now, Indiana University Press, 2007, pp. 54–72.
Land, Nick. The thirst for annihilation: Georges Bataille and virulent nihilism: an essay in atheistic religion. Routledge, 1992.
Noys, Benjamin. Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction. Pluto Press, 2000.
Pawlett, William. Georges Bataille: The sacred and society. Routledge, 2016.
Retsikas, Konstantinos, and Magnus Marsden. “Alternative modes of prosperity.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 8, no. 3, 2018, pp. 596–609. Alternative modes of prosperity, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/701215.
Robbins, Carlon. GEORGES BATAILLE AND THE MASOCHIST ETHICS OF (THE LOVE OF) ANGUISH. UNC Charlotte, 2012. Academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/1604430/GEORGES_BATAILLE_AND_THE_MASOCHISTIC_ETHICS_OF_THE_LOVE_OF_ANGUISH.
Rousselle, Duane. “Georges Bataille’s post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 17, no. 3, 2012, pp. 235–257.
Shaviro, Steven. “Grundrisse notes.” The Pinocchio Theory, 7 March 2006, http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=485.
Snediker, Timothy. To Have Done With Forgiveness: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Politics of Immanence. University of Denver, 2016.
Sørensen, Asger. “On a universal scale: Economy in Bataille’s general economy.” Philosophy Social Criticism, vol. 38, no. 2, 2012, pp. 169–197.
Stirner, Max. The Unique and Its Property. Translated by Wolfi Landstreicher, Little Black Cart, 1845. The Anarchist Library, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-unique-and-its-property.
Stoekl, Allan. Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
November
Titled: The Great Chain of Being and Divine Right of Kings
The theories of the Great Chain of Being and Divine Right of Kings are both philosophical and European in their origin and application. Firstly, the Great Chain of Being is a metaphysical theory. Metaphysics is easily understood as the study of reality, and the theory of the Great Chain of Being is just that: a theory which articulates a certain hierarchy in reality. Secondly, the Divine Right of Kings is also a metaphysical theory. The reason it is a metaphysical theory is more complicated than the aforementioned metaphysical theory which is the Great Chain of Being. Divine right theory is predicated on its subject that is the Divine or God. God is a metaphysical entity. So, one can easily derive that if the basis of the theory is metaphysical and its very structure and nature is grounded in metaphysics then it is at least an extension of metaphysics and at most metaphysics proper. The goal of this essay is to properly outline and then explain these two metaphysical theories which are the Great Chain of Being and Divine Right of Kings.
The theory of the Great Chain of Being is “a model of the organization of… reality… which relies on… a hierarchy ranked from the lowest… beings to those occupying the highest level of the hierarchy” (Kiełtyka). The diction in the theoretical name is precise in that it is a (ascending) chain, a static metaphysical chain. At the top of the chain is God. God is the perfect (non?)entity. In God’s exuberant perfection, we begin our descent down the chain. The closer to God, the higher up the chain is our maxim. This makes the theory of the Great Chain of Being essentially contingent on cultural relativism, that is to say that the theory of the Great Chain of Being is relative to the culture the theory is applied to. For the sake of simplicity, the theory of the Great Chain of Being is to be looked at in the context of feudal Europe, which is generally Christian. Descending to the next chain link, assuming feudal era European Chrisitianity, would be angels which are closest to God. After angels, souls in heaven would be situated on the chain. After souls in heaven there would be, assuming Divine Right theory, the Monarchs, then after the Monarchs, all other humans. Situated after humans would be all other non-human animals. The reason for this privileging of humanity over animality is due to the general anthropocentrism inherent to most philosophy, especially old European philosophy. Then after animals, plants. This is again due to the idea of Great Chain Theory, which is the closer YYY is to XXX (higher being), the higher YYY is on the chain than ZZZ which is farther from XXX in metaphysical elevation. So, one could explain the privileging of humans over animals as not arrogant anthropocentrism in that according to biblical text, which is the presuppositional relativity laid out, humans are closer to God and angels than animals are. This would also explain why plants are below animals, as animals are closer to humans than plants are, though there is no apparent philosophical warranting for this claim. After plants would be all non-living things, which could be said to be arrogant biocentrism. Near the end of the chain would be, using basic logic, souls that went to Hell. At the very end of the chain would be Satan, as Satan is furthest from the Christian God. Thus, the theory of the Great Chain of Being has been described accordingly as a theory of hierarchical metaphysical organization of beings (to reference ontology?).
The theory of the Divine Right of Kings is the theory that Sovereign Kings are justified in the rule via God (Funk and Wagnalls). Just like the theory of the Great Chain of Being, Divine Right Theory has at its starting point the Divine i.e. God. Again, following the Great Chain of Being, the structure is hierarchical, with God on the top. The King, according to Divine Right Theory, derives his right to rule their subjects from God, and therefore the King only answers to God when making political decisions about their Kingdom. Thus, the theory of the Divine Right of Kings has been described accordingly as a theory of hierarchical political organization with a metaphysical basis of God (the Divine).
In conclusion, the theories of the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings have both been explained as theories which posit hierarchical organization with a varying degree of metaphysics involved in the specific theory. Again to summarize, the theory of the Great Chain of Being proposes the perfect being to be God, and from God we can derive a systematic hierarchy (chain; descending) of (ontological?) organization. The theory of the Divine Right of Kings can be summarized as a theory which states monarchical political organization and the position of the monarch is justified by God. Metaphysical speculation besides, these theories attempted to explain the world which escapes all signification, which is a hard task to do, and one should appreciate their rigor.
Works Cited
Funk, and Wagnalls. Divine Right of Kings, Chicago Inc. World Book, 2020, eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=ec740e99–72a4–46e4-bb00-d9b1c61cae85%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=di066100&db=funk.
Kiełtyka, Robert. The Theory of the Great Chain of Being (GCB) Revisited: The Case of GCB-Level-Conditioned Animal Terms., SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 2015, eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=2c2a0b72-e61e-4ca2–8a3e-570efd15d6fe%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=110374460&db=edo.
December
Titled: Solar Econ 101
Titled: Dark Corners
Titled: Haunted
Titled: A Critique of Love
Titled: The Bench
Titled: Eternal Recurrence: A Cure to Morbid Thoughts
Eternal Recurrence is less a newly learned lesson and more of a rediscovered lesson. I have read about Nietzsche’s idea of Eternal Recurrence many times but always tend to forget it when life is predominately full of pleasure. In times when life is predominately full of pain, I always return to Nietzsche’s words; I always remember the greatness of Nietzsche. Eternal Recurrence is the full expression of the exuberant power stored within Nietzsche’s tomes. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche puts forward a thought experiment: what if during your most depressed and morbid night, a demon were to come and say to you, “You will live this life an infinite times over. Every scream, tear, cry, laugh, joy, pleasure, even this moment now will be lived over and over again.” Nietzsche asks us, “What would you say to this demon? Would you curse this demon and his accursed words, or would you tell this demon he is a god and never have you heard anything more godly?” The question Nietzsche is posing to us is one of love and strength. Nietzsche is asking us if we love our life so much we would live it over and over again, eternally recurring. The power in this is in the implication of Nietzsche’s gesture. This implication being: when one affirms every moment of one’s life, one is turning all that was into that which they willed. Sovereignty is gained over one’s life. Truly loving one’s life and fate (amor fati) is a matter of nihilism and affirmation. If one can not change one’s life and fate, why not affirm it? Whenever I feel upset, feel I lost something, feel regret, wish I could have done something different in the past, feel hopeless, etc. I always think back to Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence, and I tell the demon, “You are a god and never have I heard anything more godly.”
Post-Scriptum: I wish I held your hand a little tighter and talked to you a little longer
There are actually are things I regret. But they are so few. I’m glad I met you, even though you hurt me more than anyone else has. You made me better than anyone else could. You melted my coldness. You softened me up. And then you stabbed me in the heart. But that is how this shit goes kiddos. You fall deeply in love with someone and then they hurt you. And the pain is worse because it is from them and you know they have NO REMORSE. I thought you would be the last person to subject me to this amount of pain. I know you loved me, and I know you know that I still love you, but just holy shit somethings could have handled much much better (on both our ends). The amount of shit I went through in the month of December in the year 2020, is fucking INSANE. But I grew from it. I have become a better person from it. I hope that we can reconcile one day, and I hope to hear your voice agian, although I doubt I could handle hearing your voice right now. I’m going to miss you and this semster is going to be hard without you, but I hope to get through it. I feel as if you got over me within two days of the breakup or maybe even earlier (there are reasons I pin it at two days). And it will be months until I get over you but that is just how things go for me. Now to what I wish I had done. I wish I looked into your eyes longer, I loved getting lost in them. I wish I held your hand tighter the last time I saw you. I wish I kissed you longer. I wish I hugged you longer. I wish I talked about cows with you longer. I wish I did a lot of things with you longer. Another one of those things I wish I did differently was on October 31st, the Hallowen of 2020. On that night, you looked dazzling in your costume, but about 2 hours (?) in our FaceTime call for that night, I saw a larper who said he was a avoriationist (I believe that is what it is called) which is basically Stirnerite style egoism and anarcho-capitalism combined. I made a series of TikToks debunking the entirety of the ideology. Looking back, instead of leaving the call, debunking that guy and his cringe excuse for an ideology, and then coming back to the call, I wish that I justed stayed on the call and admired you like I did for hundereds of hours. Your eyes are truly the most beautiful stars which I have ever gazed at. Your eyes are like seductive voids of ecstasy in which I am lost into.
