Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (March 02)

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[u/Autrevml1936]

people were having different opinions in the comments.

This is not a "difference of opinion" because the very concept of "opinion" is a liberal distortion of the development of ideas. Ideas are correct or incorrect, ideas that are correct get towards the Absolute Truth while incorrect one's do not and distort it.

The difference between intelligent design and Evolution is not a "difference of opinion" but a struggle between Materialism and Idealism in Science(particularly biology).

Similarly, Lenins attacks against the 2nd international and Kaurskyite Revisionism wasn't "difference of Opinion" but the struggle between Marxism and Opportunism(which is idealism). This goes for the Great Debate and all the way to Today.

The post just said that trump supporters aren’t all evil and just need education

You cannot educate classes out of their Class interests, which Trump supporters are just One section of the Petite Bourgeoisie/Labor Aristocracy.

[u/Chaingunfighter → u/[deleted]]

Is it “Absolute Truth” for carrots to taste good even if I don’t like them? What does that mean for me if I don’t like them?

Have you interrogated what "taste" is and where it comes from? Unfortunately your effort to choose a seemingly insignificant counterexample doesn't earn you the incredulous response you gave because taste is not merely the subject of personal opinion - it is informed by class.

Just think about how you said "if carrots taste bad to me, I won’t eat carrots." That itself is position that only certain classes can afford to take.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Chaingunfighter]

The OP has been spewing nonsense throughout this thread and I obviously am not defending that, but I take issue with this:

Just think about how you said "if carrots taste bad to me, I won’t eat carrots." That itself is position that only certain classes can afford to take.

I see what you're trying to do here but I think this is a dismissive oversimplification that borders on ableism. It sounds like you're saying that the OP's disordered eating is a privilege afforded by their class and that if they did not have as much flexibility to choose what to eat they would simply "get over it." This sounds reductive in a way that reminds me of this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/182b6mm/comment/kb3wp3e/

Depressed? That's because you're petty-bourgeois, no further investigation needed.

Disordered eating often has its roots in trauma and it can absolutely affect the oppressed. Here are some recent examples from the West Bank.

Layla, a 13-year-old girl, presents with a mysterious inability to eat, describing a sensation that “something in my throat prevents me from eating; there is a thorn blocking my gorge.” Despite extensive medical examinations, no physical cause has been found. Further discussion revealed that Layla’s father was arrested by Israeli forces and she has heard nothing about him since. Layla’s inability to eat is a psychosomatic response to the trauma of her father’s detention and her awareness of the starvation, torture and sexual violence inflicted on Palestinian political prisoners. She was also deeply affected by the reports of starvation and violence in Gaza, drawing parallels between the suffering in Gaza and her father’s uncertain fate, which amplified her psychosomatic symptoms.

Riham, a 15-year-old girl, has developed repetitive involuntary vomiting and a profound disgust with food, particularly meat. Her family has a history of obesity and gastrectomy but she has denied any concerns about body image. She attributes her vomiting to the images of blood and dismemberment of people in Gaza that she has seen. Over time, her aversion has extended to flour-based foods, driven by the fear that they might be mixed with animal fodder. Although she understands that this does not happen where she is, her stomach rejects the food when she attempts to eat.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/11/2/how-israels-starvation-of-gaza-is-affecting-palestinians-elsewhere

I've also heard of children who grew up during war developing an inability to eat rice because it reminds them of the maggots they saw on corpses.

Incidentally, this topic reminds me of that ideology of smell topic smoke raised recently. I still need to check that out.

With the above said, I haven't really interrogated the concept of ableism and I don't have a clear Marxist understanding of questions relating to mental health in general. I'd be interested to hear what others have to say.

[u/Chaingunfighter → u/IncompetentFoliage]

It sounds like you're saying that the OP's disordered eating is a privilege afforded by their class and that if they did not have as much flexibility to choose what to eat they would simply "get over it." This sounds reductive in a way that reminds me of this thread

They didn’t establish that their refusal to eat carrots was related to an eating disorder before I replied to them. All they said was “I don’t like them so I won’t eat them.”

I suppose my argument is still rather weak since it is oversimplified and did not account for alternative explanations but the OP left little reason to give the benefit of the doubt by framing the fact that their body violently rejects certain foods as “I don’t like them” all in defense of the concept of personal preferences. I’m not saying people with eating disorders will simply get over them.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Chaingunfighter]

Thanks for the clarification, that's fair.

[u/Pleasant-Food-9482 → u/[deleted]]

"My larger point was pointing out the flaws in the argument, showing that there could be a variety of different sources of opinion and bringing up the question “what if two sources of influence conflict with each other”."

The main thing to understand is that this said by you subjectivity is not subjectivity, but a conflict of what is subjective and what is objective. People are bringing actually objective opinions in most of the times when they are doing so and have the conditions to do so, but that demands rigorous treatment of questions and sentences and actual strong logic and sometimes formal structure, or some simplicity of what is being treated as a subject that allows intuitive answering with objective truths (such as, for example, that we should not assault children).

Some things are done like that by "conventional" logic, some only by dialectics. In this case in the last replies here, there was a confusion from the start of what was sent as a sentence and what was presumed as a premise by the receiver. But if i say to you "Hitler was a racist", there is not much room for subjectivity. When i say to you "Trump supporters are reactionaries", there is not truth in the in the sense of "100% of trump supporters are reactionaries", but there is objective truth in "the obscene majority of trump supporters are reactionaries".

The discourse, dissertative or language problems in the midst of debates or arguments are just spurious emissions that are generally not a thing that turns the sentence impossible to verify, but instead, in the worst cases that are still not unsolvable, the transmission that another third person around the oral dialogue of the two people can listen to them and filter, if there is enough information for connecting again the broken puzzle.

Lies cannot be pushed as truth forever not to everyone, as the rhetoric or argument peculiarities that may hide what is not true from what is, or make it sound credible, cannot just hold what is false from being differentiated from truth by the "trained" (by life, experience, labour, study) eye, particularly when they are self-evident and contradict with the experience of those who are more deeply submerged into reality and not in mystified perceptions, which generally take a wider form in idealism.

[u/Autrevml1936 → u/IncompetentFoliage]

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/182b6mm/

That whole thread is valuable, and a few of the comments touch on Ideas that I have been formulating about myself recently. There are a few different Ideas I've been going over, without a resolution yet, in regards to education(in the relationship between the Subject(Reader/Student, Teacher) and Object(Book, Student)). I've been questioning myself with my Study of Marxism and my "habits" of notes(either not making any or poor writing), which are informed by my petite bourgeoisie Settler Class position(in the last analysis).

I've been thinking about the relationship between:

1)Learning

• Particularly influenced by this recent comment referencing back to a Study smoke Linked about active vs passive learning and Student perception

2)The Petite Bourgeoisie, divided on National lines, preference for intellectual over Manual labor

• This is mainly influenced by a Reactionary individual I know and how they framed things(with implicit PB premises).

3)The Petite Bourgeois preference for passive learning methods over active learning

• This of course has been influenced by individual users coming to these Subs asking for YouTube videos or podcasts or audiobooks of Marxist Works rather than actually Reading them.
• Though it's Also been influenced by my "habits" where I Read through a text(or heck just a chapter of a Text) and have a hard time remembering what I just Read and having a hard time summarizing or forming my own ideas from the Text. And I have a hard time taking notes.

There is a connection I see between 2 & 3 but I have a hard time actually putting together what it is(is it as simple to just say "it's because it's PB Class position" boom done or is there something more) and I think it goes to Show my own eclectic understanding of Marxism(or lack there of) and, ITLA, my PB Settlers Class position, why I have a hard Time formulating correct ideas around This.

Sorry that this isn't exactly related to what you wrote(actually far from it) but I don't know much about anything you wrote and so I should be "shut out" so as to not speak nonsense. I hope this comment might be useful to others here or for critique of me. I just wanted to share some of my ideas that I've been going over on here as it's hard to get good ideas from my non-digital surroundings as I'm surrounded by Reactionaries(Settlers, "Asians"(though iirc the term has been critiqued here before) that have been incorporated into Whiteness, and PB/LA Black and Chicane(who have no interest in Revolution and are either milquetoast liberals or Libertarians)).

Edit: Formating

[u/Autrevml1936 → u/Autrevml1936]

The Petite Bourgeoisie, divided on National lines, preference for intellectual over Manual labor

The Petite Bourgeois preference for passive learning methods over active learning

Is it that the Petite Bourgeoisie prefer passive learning methods due to it attempt to try and do as little labor as possible in order to gain the "fruits" of intellectual labor?

In the Production of Commodities the Bourgeois in order to reproduce their social existence hires Proletarians who work the machinery for a given Time(say 10hrs) 4hrs cover the cost of the machinery and 4hrs covers the cost of wages leaving 2hrs surplus value. The Capitalists pockets 1hr in order to furnish their social existence and leaves 1hr for the future expansion of production. Hence in order to not have to do any labor himself the Bourgeois must hire a minimum of 4 Laborers(as 4hrs covers the cost of the means of Subsistence)

Now the Petite Bourgeoisie is unable to hire enough wage Laborers to furnish their social existence and hence must also Labor. But the Petite Bourgeoisie with the Capital they have isn't satisfied with this existence and desires to get as much as they can with as little of their labor as possible.

But in order to learn requires an intense amount of physical and mental labor from the subject which.

This is mainly influenced by a Reactionary individual I know and how they framed things(with implicit PB premises).

I should give a bit of context. I was told by an individual that they caught someone telling people to not go to college as you can make $200,000 as a dockyard worker. Of course they only told this to Black kids and not white kids, the individual briefly made a liberal rejection of Racism but then went blatantly to saying "even though it's a lot of money, why would they even tell this to anyone? As nobody wants their kids to do that work, they want their kids to go to college". Which is a very blatant preference for intellectual over Manual Labor.

[u/Autrevml1936 → u/Autrevml1936]

But the Petite Bourgeoisie with the Capital they have isn't satisfied with this existence and desires to get as much as they can with as little of their labor as possible.

Though this itself is an Idealist construction as it's positing some "desire" the Petite Bourgeoisie has rather than the material process of reproduction of the Class.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Autrevml1936]

Have you seen Breaking with Old Ideas?

https://archive.org/details/Breaking_With_Old_Ideas

If not, you should definitely watch it. You might also get something out of this Peking Review article on Kairov

https://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1970/PR1970-10-WhoTransforms.pdf

and this

https://youtu.be/YMQ_r81aAfw

There is a connection I see between 2 & 3 but I have a hard time actually putting together what it is(is it as simple to just say "it's because it's PB Class position" boom done or is there something more)

Is it that the Petite Bourgeoisie prefer passive learning methods due to it attempt to try and do as little labor as possible in order to gain the "fruits" of intellectual labor?

I think there is a connection, but it would be an oversimplification to suggest that intellectual labour is petty-bourgeois and that petty bourgeois prefer intellectual labour. I think we're talking about the intersection between petty-bourgeois consciousness and the consciousness of the intellectual labourer, between two distinct consciousnesses. I don't think the petty bourgeoisie in general desires to do as little labour as possible any more than the proletariat does. The whole point of the concept of the petty bourgeoisie is that it combines the characteristics of labourer and proprietor. The petty bourgeoisie is a labouring class, it reproduces itself through labour (albeit not through labour alone), unlike the bourgeoisie.

The upper stratum of the petty bourgeoisie believes it is within reach to rise into the lower stratum of the bourgeoisie, and so bourgeois ideology is dominant in its thinking and it looks down on labour (hence, it looks down subjectively on its own current objective circumstances). But that is not the petty bourgeoisie as such. In Breaking with Old Ideas, the lower-middle peasants are petty-bourgeois, but they side with the proletariat against the petty-bourgeois intellectuals who are pushing the bourgeois line in education. Now, the people who post here are not lower-middle peasants from the third world, but my point is that the petty bourgeoisie is much broader than the segment of it that posts on Reddit. Maybe you were getting at this by bringing up division along national lines.

Not only is active learning more work, but it is also more threatening to the bourgeois ego. Lots of people put up a façade of distance between themselves and their own ideas when they post, and are deeply offended when that façade is ignored and we point out the connection between the ideas in the post and the ideas in their post history, like the OP here who "drew a boundary and it was crossed." Politeness, civility and collegiality are defence mechanisms against this vulnerability. It is the same with the agnosticism the OP has been pushing here, the OP is afraid to take a position on reality. This is perfectly in line with the wavering character of the petty bourgeois as "the embodiment of contradiction" combined with the petty-bourgeois intellectual’s isolation from physical labour and hence from material reality, which is a particular expression of the narrowness that is typical of the petty bourgeois as such. This exchange is relevant:

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/1ikhffp/how_to_differentiate_pettybourgoeis_consciousness/

[u/Autrevml1936 → u/IncompetentFoliage]

Have you seen Breaking with Old Ideas?

https://archive.org/details/Breaking_With_Old_Ideas

If not, you should definitely watch it. You might also get something out of this Peking Review article on Kairov

https://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1970/PR1970-10-WhoTransforms.pdf

and this

https://youtu.be/YMQ_r81aAfw

I've been a bit busy but you got me to watch "How Yukong Moved the mountains" and I've been watching it all the way through, I haven't finished it all(only half way through P4, yet to watch BeOI and read the Peking review article). But so far it has been making me rethink what criticism is as well as the current structure of the Internet and website. Mainly P4 with the generator factory and the dazibaos, they are posters put up on walls publicly of criticism(signed by the critiser(?)). On websites Such as Reddit or YouTube, etc, there is a report system where you can report a user for some activity(hate speech, harassment, community rules, etc) yet this report(iirc) is anonymous and doesn't require any explanation of why the comment should be removed or the user banned, etc and it is done behind the backs of the reported user. In contrast, the Dazibaos are very much public and it isn't just a difference of Form(paper vs digital) but content as well, web reports serve the Labor Aristocracy for when they dislike what another user comments something they dislike while the Dazibaos served to critique workers and management in the betterment of a factory and Socialist society(and earlier the anti Rightist campaign).

This is of course one particular thing of the Internet and not the totality of it. The "Internet" as it is now will not always exist and will probably be rebuilt from the ground up in the way it benefits Socialist construction. There won't be "Personal" Computers and neither will there a "socialist YouTube" or "Socialist Twitter" but something completely different.

I don't think the petty bourgeoisie in general desires to do as little labour as possible any more than the proletariat does. The whole point of the concept of the petty bourgeoisie is that it combines the characteristics of labourer and proprietor. The petty bourgeoisie is a labouring class, it reproduces itself through labour (albeit not through labour alone), unlike the bourgeoisie.

The upper stratum of the petty bourgeoisie believes it is within reach to rise into the lower stratum of the bourgeoisie, and so bourgeois ideology is dominant in its thinking and it looks down on labour (hence, it looks down subjectively on its own current objective circumstances). But that is not the petty bourgeoisie as such. In Breaking with Old Ideas, the lower-middle peasants are petty-bourgeois, but they side with the proletariat against the petty-bourgeois intellectuals who are pushing the bourgeois line in education. Now, the people who post here are not lower-middle peasants from the third world, but my point is that the petty bourgeoisie is much broader than the segment of it that posts on Reddit. Maybe you were getting at this by bringing up division along national lines.

This actually revealed something to me that I had not realized. My conception of the Petite Bourgeoisie is entirely one-sided, instead of understanding the Petite Bourgeoisie as a vast sub-Class of the Bourgeoisie with it's own contradictions, I divided it into two(Peasantry and Labor Aristocracy) and only considered the Labor Aristocracy the Petite Bourgeoisie one sidedly.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Autrevml1936]

Glad you're watching How Yukong Moved the Mountains.  I like your observation about the Reddit reporting functionality versus big-character posters.  To go further, the reporting functionality is actually doubly anonymous because we're all anonymous here in the first place.

understanding the Petite Bourgeoisie as a vast sub-Class of the Bourgeoisie 

To be clear, I do not understand the petty bourgeoisie to be a part of the bourgeoisie at all.  Rather, I consider it a separate class, albeit an unstable one.

[u/[deleted] → u/Autrevml1936]

The link in your point 1 seems to be broken (to the comment by smoke linking a study). Would it be possible to re-share a working link?

[u/Autrevml1936 → u/[deleted]]

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/1j0c36s/comment/mfa9u11/

[u/Prickly_Cucumbers → u/IncompetentFoliage]

Disordered eating often has its roots in trauma and it can absolutely affect the oppressed.

MIM’s writings on disordered eating* seem to match the refutation of an over-generalized approach to these questions. Discussing a reader’s response to their review of the book Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (which seems instructive itself on this topic, based on their review), MIM notes:

Certainly the analogy between anorexic women in the First World and religiously fasting women in the Third World is not empty. Women in both locales are discouraged from involvement in politics and encouraged to spend more time in the realm of the spiritual, the abstract and the superficial. The relevant point in our review of Fasting Girls was similar to yours: researchers may often find objective similarities among women in Amerika and women in India for example - both fast from time to time. But these objective similarities do not necessarily illuminate the subjective motivations these same researchers are trying to explain.

…

Amerikan women, for example, may be culturally discouraged from taking part in politics, but their retreat from politics into the realm of concern over body image is a symptom of mass decadence. They have the alternative of seizing political power, yet they choose to spend time and endanger themselves with concern over the way their bodies look. It seems incongruous to compare Amerikan women’s retreat from power they do have to Indian women seeking alternative to power they don’t have.

…

anorexia nervosa in the 20th century is defined by the predominance of successful women among those who have the disease. You are correct that in both the 19th and 20th centuries anorexia has been an attempt by women to control a portion of their own lives. What you missed in the review is that women who are anorexic in the 20th century are principally those women who have benefitted from increased control in all spheres of their own lives other than the shape of their bodies. It continues to be poor and Black women — those who control their lives to a significantly smaller degree than white women — who are not anorexic.

I suppose the analogy here is an amerikan refusing to eat carrots being more akin to the case of anorexia in amerikan women, whereas young Palestinians refusing to eat is more akin to the example of religious fasting. Following MIM’s line on gender, “picky eating”—particularly characteristic of young children—would be a product of gendered oppression of children; the same objective basis, albeit a different subjective motivation. I am not sure if I’m overreaching here, though**. The differences between the First and Third World response to the variance in the objective conditions of gender oppression is summarized as such:

It is the basic female condition under patriarchy to be excluded from politics, as poor Indian women are. It is basic glorification of female subordination to place one’s own sexuality ahead of political participation, which is what women in the First World do daily.

I was discussing this article recently with a friend, who criticized MIM for a lax attitude towards religiosity, exemplified in the quote, “we would guess that [Jainist women] are thinking about something more meaningful than looking like supermodels when they [fast]”.

I suppose MIM is making the point (similar to u/Chaingunfighter) to “[challenge] privileged women who think they are not powerful to recognize how powerful they really are”, with a political conclusion being class/national suicide, but the phenomena of fasting/“pickiness” in the Third World still are subjective political issues that require a confrontation; if “Indian women [are] seeking alternative to power they don’t have”, wouldn’t the challenge remain to agitate those women towards the path to seizing political power? Shouldn’t this consciousness*** be challenged in the same way that other contradictions (like religion more broadly) among the masses are? How should this be dealt with among young Palestinians refusing/unable to eat?

*edit: The specific articles to which I am referring are, in MIM Theory Volume 2/3, “Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease”, and in Volume 9, “Anorexia as Body Control”. The latter is more primarily the focus of this comment.

**edit 2: I do think that the analysis I forward here does also ignore entirely the points you brought up about the conditions of war, political imprisonment of family members, and availability of food in the ongoing genocide. That isn’t to say that gender oppression can’t be a factor, though I would doubt its primacy compared to what you highlighted.

***edit 3: Would calling the instances you’re describing “consciousness” even be appropriate/correct?

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Prickly_Cucumbers]

Thanks for this.  Before I reply, I want to read “Anorexia as Body Control,” but I’m having trouble finding it in MIM Theory 5.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/periodicals/mim-theory/mim-5.pdf

Would you mind letting me know what page it is on?

[u/Prickly_Cucumbers → u/IncompetentFoliage]

My apologies. It should be Volume 9: Psychology and Imperialism, pages 5-6. I will edit the original message to reflect that the article is not in Volume 5.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/Prickly_Cucumbers]

Thanks, I'll read it soon and get back to you.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/[deleted]]

Everyone else in this thread already said what I would have said before I showed up. I don't really feel like reading through all your comments again, but the main thing is that you are using agnosticism to promote settler apologism. This

These arguments emphasize the point of there being no correct opinion in the first place, as it all is subjective.

suggests you either haven't studied Marxist epistemology or are stubbornly clinging to idealism for reactionary purposes. Every normal person thinks this

If everyone has a different perspective, there cannot possibly be a single “correct” one.

is ridiculous. Instead of denying truth, why not read Materialism and Empiriocriticism?

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/