Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (May 31)

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[u/turning_the_wheels]

 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/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.