Yesterday I had argument with Cowbee about this here. This seems like hijack of word “base” to support their propaganda like many others Words Which Defy Dictionaries. Base, is always ideology. Sure their so called “base” influence upper ones, but it is not the base. Base is something core, without it the thing cannot function. can human live without ideology? Without right or wrong?
It make sense to base our self on other ideologies but not on ideology of means of production or ownership first.
If you think this is misunderstanding, please explain your argument in simple language without using communist jargons if possible.
I suspect hardcore communists doesn’t want to admit flaws instead they blow up dust of words to cover. I also suspect that i can be wrong or half understood the argument or using wrong definition of terms, that’s why i am posting here
that “superstructure” XOR “base” paradigm is insane.
Do any people always think like that??
Marx made a fundamental error, in all of his thinking: he presumed that communism’s meaning would be everybody-owning-everything, in universal fraternity.
ACTUAL communism expressed its essence in Brutalism: nobody owning anything, & authority-over-others being the “gold” that everybody was grubbing-after & fighting-over.
( there is a fundamental law in human behavior: the treatment a resource, or tool, gets, is the lowest-common-denominator of the ones who own it.
So, if 5 people own a tool or resource, & 1 couldn’t care less if it is butchered/broken, then the other-4’s care for that tool/resource don’t matter, the one who mistreats it because they don’t value it, defines the level-of-care that that tool/resource gets.
When EVERYBODY doesn’t care, because nobody is allowed to own their own things, then Brutalism becomes the result.
In architecture, in tractors, in aircraft, in everything.
For fine-cherishing to happen, the owners of the something have to have fine-cherishing for that something.
That, itself, falsifies communism.
The fact that YOUR own life is something that YOU alone can value sufficiently, YOU are the only someone who’s going to lose it, when death-process shatters your unconscious-mind … that itself means that you have to have necessary & sufficient experience with personal/private property while living, in order to have proper boundaries when dying, so you can concentrate on your dying-process, instead of just being a patsy who’s being distracted for social-process’s sake, e.g… )
Anyways, language can program perception.
Culture can program perception.
Western more-self-centered cultures are less likely to perceive background, in photos or videos, than are more communally-centered cultures ( Asian, was the studies that I’d read about ).
So, linguistic-programming ( I’m not necessarily talking about NLP, don’t even know what scope they claim ) can define one’s awareness, one’s culture, etc…
Therefore, it’d have to be basis, wouldn’t it?
So would ideology/axioms/presumptions/beliefs.
dividing things only into 2 categories, though…
No: it’s oversimplification.
Marx’s mistake is profound, & that mistake was because he ( probably unconsciously ) wouldn’t accept that communism could be anything opposite to his utopian-assumption.
Therefore, his utopian-assumption would have to be basis, & all the rigamarole he prescribed would have to be, in that scheme, “superstructure”, … from that 2-level view, wouldn’t it?
LMAO…
THERE’S A FEEDBACK-LOOP IN CULTURES, so labelling things “basis” & “superstructure” is already systematically ignoring the self-amplification or self-quenching of different aggregates-of-culture, among different individuals!
& then you also have the amplifying-different-harmonics among extraverts vs introverts…
among the different-kinds-of-motivations…
etc.
Interesting, though: I wonder if such fundamental-oversimplifications are characteristic of all such ideologies?
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Don’t know what you mean by the concept of base and superstructure being “insane.” It’s a general observation that the way we produce shapes our culture, which reinforces the way we produce.
You’re also fundamentally entirely wrong about communism. Communism isn’t when you have a bunch of tools in a pile and everyone can walk up to it and use it, then throw it back into the pile, or anything, it’s a fully collectively owned and planned industrial economy. The tragedy of the commons doesn’t apply to, say, the post office, as an example.
The difference between Nazis and communists is that one of them lost a world war. You should not give them the time of day.
No, this is just Double Genocide Theory, and is a form of Holocaust trivialization. The Nazis brutally oppressed the working class and created a system of industrialized mass murder, the communists oppressed the capitalists and doubled life expectancies, tripled literacy rates, provided free and high quality eduaction and healthcare, and far more.
The idea that the Soviets were anywhere close to as evil as the Nazis requires erasing the Holocaust, and equating the suffering of the small portion of society as the capitalists and Tsarists to the large working class in Germany, both groups were victims in their respective countries but clearly the brutality of the Tsarists and capitalists against the working class is what earned the revolution in the first place.
I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933
6-7 million lives exterminated seems significant, to me.
Holodomor was a significant part of that, targetting Ukraine.
The same Ukraine that Putin’s trying to genocide to “de-nazify”.
Evil’s evil, & tends to have the same kind of intent, recurringly.
The 1930s famine in the Soviet Union wasn’t anything intentional, but was the result of adverse weather conditions combined with kulaks destroying grain and livestock rather than let their property be collectivized and benefit the workers they exploited for centuries. Tragic, yes, evil? No, if anything the kulaks have a better claim to that.
I don’t know if you know this, but the USSR dissolved 3 decades ago. Putin isn’t a communist, nor is the Russo-Ukrainian War a genocide, but a war. The extermination of Palestine at the hands of Israel is a genocide. Really confused why you’re bringing up Putin unless your point is that Russians are intrinsically evil, when we are specifically talking about the Soviet Union.
Yeah chief I don’t agree with your witticism here.
Call me crazy, but I think people who want to improve the world somewhat based on an economic and sociopolitical analysis of a pretty smart dude who’s work still shapes our economic understanding even in the most pro-capitalist reaganist fringes today do in fact have a few more differences with people who built an ideology based on using a merged government-corporate state apparatus to exterminate jews, queers, slavs etc. to create more living space for their specific ethnicity.
I also think you don’t actually have to pretend like Nazis and communists are equal or even close just to be able to criticize the imperialism and many mistakes and general dysfunction of the USSR, tankies and general bad faith argumentation like in OP probably done by a random putlerist fascist russian shill/bot or like a 14 year old who skimmed a wikipedia info box on dialectics once.
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week etc. Fascists are why we have the Holocaust, and I guess now also no jimmy Kimmel.
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week etc.
If by “communist” you mean leftists in the west, then yes.
But if by “communist” you mean those who supported USSR and PRC, Lol no, their shit end up failing and USSR’s successor state is now an oligarchy and modern PRC is an authoritarian state-capitalist regime, with most of the negatives of America, but worse. Seriously, I know the US’s labor rights are atrocious, but PRC is a whole another level; no unions, no workplace safety, no overtime bonus, long hours, minimal breaks, most places have zero paid vacation days, and its a stuggle to even get an unpaid sick day. I mean there is a lunar new year bonus (symbolicly representing the boss giving you a Red Envelope), but that doesn’t mean shit when pay is already low, so the its just posturing. And healthcare in mainland China isn’t free, its basically equivalent to the US for the most part, but you also need the money ready for ER, many hospitals make you pay first before getting treatment, not the “bill you later” that the US does.
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week
You are saying this like it is very good thing, without any defects. When Society is too used to these safety laws. What do you can do in emergency? You will say it is our birth right, as consequence you will suffer decrease in performance, which may can result in defeat in war. By which your whole society including these benefits will collapse.
Just my guess, because of minimum wage, your country probably is importing immigrants & immigrants students in order to make them work illegally, as cheap labor, natives are not willing to work for cheap, your businesses are going to foreign countries for cheap labor. The whole thing could have been prevented if there would not been strong minimum wage laws. As result work conditions would have suffered but as group you could have increased performance. but probably, in your country, you have no trust in leaders, political parties and organizations. Who would rather get torture than to betray their people. Probably there are not many, Which is result of inferior culture. That’s why you think you always need all these restrains & you assume powerful always take advantage. Or maybe your view of complete lack of hurt is blinding you the damage of all this.
Lol I see. Don’t right-wing propaganda shills these days have access to DeepL or something? Your grammar is fucking awful.
Just for the record for lurkers ITT: I am an immigrant and I came to ze west originally on a student visa, no one “imported” me, finding a job was nigh impossible because no we don’t work illegally because the risk of losing a visa is very high and there are strict limits on jobs you can do, when and how long, including both by profession and by income level, often far above median and only if the corpo has the license and paperwork which all cost fuckloads for them, and finding a job out of that limited pool as a fresh grad was hell on earth.
The only reason I could even get to that stage was because my parents were fairly well off and across the 7 or so years before I became independent the costs of immigrating were in the hundreds of thousands on them. I had to leave the nest at 13.
When I started working I had to pay double tax for healthcare through visa fees first, then off my income tax as normal, and it took 13 years to get a permanent residence permit on the “10-year route” due to other hidden requirements during which I lived in permanent fear of deportation, the only reason I did it was genuine fear of persecution in my country of origin for being LGBT due to the fascist government there.
I’m sharing this here because the general public’s idea of immigration is often well - nuts, and completely out of touch with reality of immigrants, so hopefully now if you didn’t know, you know better.
Not the person you replied to. Just want to share:
I wasn’t born in the US, I came to the US legally and I have citizenship now. I still feel afraid of being denaturalized and deported under this current regime.
It really sucks that my two plausible choices are Authoritarian State-Capitalist PRC, and the other other choice, USA, has now become a Hyrbid Regime undergoing autocratization. Wish I could go to the EU but its unrealistic. There’s just so frequent racism/xenophobia in the US, but I also despise PRC, since people are even more conservative than here in the US. Can’t think of any place that truly feels “home”, I have this feeling of being “unwelcomed” anywhere I go.
Time your move right, & consider Canada.
Fair warning, though: I consider it inevitable that Trump is going to be declaring war on Canada, because Canada won’t make itself his personal sycophant/property.
The reason he wants Greenland is so as to cut-off all Atlantic trade with Canada, same as Alaska allows him to cut-off all Pacific trade, & then he can more-easily crush/destroy our lives.
However, he’ll be fighting war on 3 fronts: to the south, civil-war, AND Canada, & so therefore we’ll have a fair chance to outlast him.
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Just to clarify, are you calling me a fascist/14 yo/etc? I’m a communist, I organize in real life, I’ve read more than wikipedia, and I’m a working adult. None of what I said that OP is quoting is particularly out of the norm for the Marxist understanding of base and superstructure, and it was all in good faith that I responded, I even clarified more over here. OP seems to be anti-union, anti-safety net, etc and came into a months old comment chain, and I still gave them a clear and coherent overview without copying and pasting dozens of Marx and Engels quotes to make my point.
No? I wasn’t responding to you lol wtf, re-read the thread, I’m responding to the same guy you responded to, who said:
"The difference between Nazis and communists is that one of them lost a world war. You should not give them the time of day. "
I also think you don’t actually have to pretend like Nazis and communists are equal or even close just to be able to criticize the imperialism and many mistakes and general dysfunction of the USSR, tankies and general bad faith argumentation like in OP probably done by a random putlerist fascist russian shill/bot or like a 14 year old who skimmed a wikipedia info box on dialectics once.
Thought you meant the argumentation done in the OP being me, the one OP referenced by name and in the screenshot. Sorry for the confusion, thanks for clearing it up!
