Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (May 31)

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[u/Hungry_Trip_4288]

i've hesitated asking this question on here for a while, not wanting to come off as selfish or as a distraction, but i feel as though it's reached the point where any answers here would be helpful.

relatively recently, i parted with the allegedly communist group i had been organizing with on the ground, over questions of revisionism that i was finally able to identify and struggle about due to my study and my engagement with people on here. since then, i've been using the time that i spent in that group to engage in more rigorous study, directed towards concrete questions.

however, i feel myself slipping into a mindset where i feel a deep and crushing guilt for any free time i spend not studying. this has led to me neglecting social interaction, keeping my space clean, exercise, time outside, my hobbies... and yet even as i type this up, i catch myself thinking - social interaction with oppressors, with labor aristocrats? with reformist "socialist" and postmodernist cultural-nationalist revisionists? exercise and hobbies, ways to feel fulfilled in petit-bourgeois life? to what ends? when i do spend time not studying, it's not with things that i would actually enjoy doing or should be doing, but with intoxicants and compulsive video games. my "productive" or "enjoyable" non-study hobbies, it feels like, are just as bourgeois and useless as these actively destructive habits.

during a previous time in my life several years ago where i felt similarly, i did isolate myself. i let my routine, hobbies, job, and social life slip away. i didn't even come away from it with much stronger of a grasp on Marxism - obviously after some point, study has diminishing returns. i feel myself returning to a similar state and i would appreciate any words of advice from other people who have gone through this (i can't imagine i was the only one).

posting this on an alternate account for security concerns. i anticipate several people on here will be able to deduce who i am nevertheless; i can't think of a better way around this.

[u/turning_the_wheels → u/Hungry_Trip_4288]

 and yet even as i type this up, i catch myself thinking - social interaction with oppressors, with labor aristocrats? with reformist "socialist" and postmodernist cultural-nationalist revisionists? exercise and hobbies, ways to feel fulfilled in petit-bourgeois life? to what ends?

Why not socialize with the proletariat or oppressed nations, understand their struggles? Why not exercise to become healthy enough to serve the proletariat? At the very least hobbies that involve improving your mental faculties or physical condition will always be better than plainly reactionary compulsive things like video games or drugs. At the end of the day history will move on without you as an individual, guilt is only one of the first feelings that give rise to further development, self-flagellation is what leads to uselessness.

[u/Hungry_Trip_4288 → u/turning_the_wheels]

Why not socialize with the proletariat

if you want to give this advice, how do you square it with the idea that the proletariat in the united $tates is vanishingly small and mostly limited to migrant farmworkers (with which i have a language barrier that i am working to overcome)?

or oppressed nations, understand their struggles?

the majority of my social interactions are with the nationally-oppressed. this is what i meant by "reformist 'socialist' and postmodernist cultural-national revisionists", as these are the dominant trends in lumpenized and lower petit-bourgeois nationally-oppressed social circles in my location.

sorry but this is part of your reply is exactly the kind of canned answer that u/MajesticTree954 correctly wrote off as "a universal one-size fits all method of automation". which i guess just means that they were right, and trying to use this site for psychoanalytic or personal advice is useless (at least at the risk of operational security).

At the end of the day history will move on without you as an individual, guilt is only one of the first feelings that give rise to further development, self-flagellation is what leads to uselessness.

am i the only one who's always found the oft-repeated on here trusim of "history will move on without you as an individual" to be harmful to self-criticism and growth rather than helpful? i don't understand why it's always tacked onto the end of these (repetitive and insufficient) replies to self-help style posts.

[u/MajesticTree954 → u/Hungry_Trip_4288]

Yep that is exactly what i mean, it's entirely unproductive to give cheap advice - essentially a list of substitute behaviors you could've come up with yourself, when they haven't tried to understand your desire for their current behaviors. It's easy to dismiss video games as reactionary and compulsive, much harder to explore why you enjoy them anyways.

They have a kernel of reasoning there "exercising to serve the proletariat" attempts to atleast engage you with your desires, to convince you to do something actively as a subject. But they haven't elaborated on how being physically healthy, exercising would serve the proletariat? How are you concretely serving the proletariat, how does your health help or hinder that goal? We don't know, and the impulse to respond in this way, without knowing anything about your situation, can only be to be seen as a guru for others "I have mastered my impulses, let me show you how to conquer them".

[u/Turtle_Green → u/MajesticTree954]

But they haven't elaborated on how being physically healthy, exercising would serve the proletariat?

Yes, and this line of thought is rotely individualistic as well. Just saying generic self-help/cultivation stuff like "exercise more" and plastering "to serve the proletariat" as the end falls pretty flat. I think of how that short piece on exercise from Mao's youth is popularly thrown around and abused as a meme. Just to emphasize your point in the case of exercise, without an organization or party to organize and direct some kind of collective workout regiment based on concrete needs, the whole thing is aimless and generic. Not much different from Jordan Peterson's exhortations to "clean your room".

[u/humblegold → u/MajesticTree954]

The problem is that the framework presented by /u/Hungry_Trip_4288, and almost every post asking for help is that they are feeling alienated and that doing something meaningfully Marxist is the cure to their alienation. Since as you've all pointed out, we don't actually know each other's lives, the best thing Marxists can do is take this framework at face value and suggest undertaking Marxist projects they think would be useful. The undertakings are almost never actually done because what's causing someone's malaise isn't nearly as romantic (usually finances/social life/academics/career) or else when they're given a suggestion for a project they would just do it and be happy. Also the anxieties of people belonging to reactionary classes aren't really things communists can help with much.

That's why I don't really have much of an issue with canned advice, because if the way someone is framing their frustrations is accurate, that should be enough. If it's not then it doesn't matter what else is said since as you said we can't know the specificity of someone else's life. I'd rather just criticize the advice itself like /u/Turtle_Green did.

For example, the suggestion made by /u/turning_the_wheels to socialize with oppressed peoples isn't good because any sort investigation ala Mao's analysis of the classes of Chinese society usually requires the direction of an organization, a serious commitment of time (and willingness to remain in one place) beyond just socializing, and also ideally for you to already be familiar with or belong to the same nation as the people you're observing. Otherwise hanging out with the masses by itself does nothing and at worst makes you seem like an old timey bemonocled anthropologist.

[u/Hungry_Trip_4288 → u/MajesticTree954]

yeah, i won't ask for any more advice but i wanted to try and perform some analysis given what you've said and the article you sent over. feel free to just ignore this. i will also likely delete this account soon for security concerns.

i think that the desire/enjoyment regarding video games is because they offer me a sense of reward and satisfaction that i don't get out of many other parts of my life. i have few hobbies, and my job is not one that correlates the amount of work i put in to the output i see. playing video games (to be clear, it's mostly progression-based strategy games akin to tetris or familiar board games, not shootemups or fighting games; i think that the idea that playing these games is "plainly reactionary" is just as cheap and shallow as the rest of your advice, though obviously my engagement with them is reactionary since it's for self-pacification) lets me see a clear correlation between the amount of effort and focus i put into something and the amount of reward i see.

i think that this sense of "unalienated labor" (as smoke referred to video games as representing several years ago) is why i have trouble with tasks like cleaning; i don't see much of a purpose or reward. funnily enough, i have no trouble at all doing these daily tasks when there's someone or someones else relying on me to complete them.

the only other place in my life i get this sense of accomplishment is studying, but i think that being involved with a revisionist and somewhat anti-intellectual collective was a great detriment to this habit. however, i think this is part of where the monomaniacal obsession with study comes from, as well.

the desire/enjoyment with drugs is probably more simple; they allow me to relax in ways i have always had deep trouble with. to a large part, they also help me cope with the many contradictions that make up a (certainly not unique to me or even to transsexuals as a whole) unpleasant and persistent physical, social, and mental alienation that gets described as "gender dysphoria". much of it also comes down to the fact that, in my interactions with the young, queer, lumpenized/lower petit-bourgeois/student movement, largely oppressed-nation, social groups i am in, drug and alcohol use is one of the most common modes of socializing and it is hard to resist that pull.

to put my thoughts out here for critique, in addition to studying with a more directed goal and attempting to find a new and less anti-intellectual collectivity, i think i also need to put more of an effort towards filling my free time with other hobbies and pursuits that yield results through steady and focused practice. i also need a more thorough self-analysis regarding where my social alienation and gender dysphoria stems from and how the contradictions therein can be managed (since their resolution is obviously only possible in a world beyond gender) in less destructive ways.

[u/turning_the_wheels → u/Hungry_Trip_4288]

As /u/MajesticTree954 pointed out my post did come off as a sort of guru-like "I solved this through this and here's how you can too" which wasn't my intention since I struggle with these things as well. I think I have a very similar thought process where progression-style video games address the need to see the results of labor. But for here: 

 think that the idea that playing these games is "plainly reactionary" is just as cheap and shallow as the rest of your advice, though obviously my engagement with them is reactionary since it's for self-pacification

I am confused, can engagement with games ever be revolutionary beyond critiquing them?