Great news filthy! Schools in San Francisco will no longer be named after genocidal imperialist maniacs like Washington, Lincoln or Dianne Feinstein!

The chances of you becoming a bona fide conspiracy theorist who has abandoned most notions that actual progress is possible, is a lot greater than me becoming a Marxist.

wow awesome!

sf board of supervisors start every meeting acknowledging the ohlone people who lived there for 10 thousand years and had their land stolen by settlers

at least i heard that somewhere

"conspiracy theorist" is something I will never be because I will never believe in something specifically because others don't

that is obviously a terrible and ridiculous way to live your life

You are aware that there are lots of things I don't believe in that other people also don't believe in?
And moreover, there are lots of conspiracy ideas that I think are correct, that lots of people do believe are also correct.
So your statement is incorrect on both fronts.

Conspiracy theorerist

what even is a conspiracy theorist then?

If a man builds a machine and that machine conspires with another machine built by another man, are those men conspiring?

--Ray McKinnon, The Accountant

Maybe they come up with testable and falsifiable theories of how to judge conspiracies.

Short answer is that it's a person who believes that conspiracies run deep in terms of how this world operates, that democracy is largely a fiction, that by and large the big earth changing political events are made to happen rather than happen on their own, or through the mechanisms of capital, or through the will of the people, or through billions of people all making individual decisions, or any other grand theories about how things work that you could come up with.

or they develop externally inconsistent egotistical languages to describe adverse phenomena

For me to become a Marxist would be basically impossible though for a couple of different reasons.
I would be forced to ignore things that I already know to be true about the nature of the world-- something I could not do.
And on a more philosophical level, Marxism is a political ideology whereas "trutherism" is about understanding.
I'm fine believing that capitalism is a horrible system that puts money before lives and in essence makes people slaves to money, and that it ruins lives. And I'm fine believing that there could be a better way and that that way could be through some implementation of Marxist ideas. Let the workers own the means of production I say. Why not give it a shot? But that's as close as you'll get from me.

This is both circular and overly vague. Be more precise. Which "conspiracies". Language like this is the same language the CIA et al use. Just lump any suggestion of a conspiracy into the same bundle. You can make a conspiracy about anything so just saying you believe in conspiracies doesn't make sense because they could easily be made to directly contradict each other.

There could be one conspiracy that says the earth is flat, and another that says the earth is a cube. They can't both be right? Do you see why something vague and purposeless like "believe in conspiracies" doesn't amke sense?

Vague. Be more precise. Do you mean democracy as a concept can't be an effective form of governance? Or do you mean that things that we have labled democracy in modern society aren't in fact democratic?

I am not even sure that this means. I feel like your syntax is indecipherable. What I think you are saying is that "earth changing politics events are made to happen" as compared to all the other possible reasons things might happen. But if that is what you mean this is also vague. Be more precise. What does "made to happen" mean? And how is it actually different than any of the other explanations you listed?

One of the main issues you have is you believe Marxism to be the thing that liberals and capitalist ideology has told you it is, rather than learning what Marxism ACTUALLY is. It's funny how you see all the ways that liberal ideology has tricked people and masked the real state of things, but then you use that same liberal ideology to try to understand what Marxism is.

Marxism is not a political ideology and it is not communism. Marxism is the study and analysis of society and how society changes and why.

The only thing Marxism tells us about how we should be governed is that Capitalism, fundamentally, has internal contradictions that, eventually, will not be maintainable. And when those contradictions finally undo capitalism that the ONLY options available to society will be communism and barbarism. And given those two options, communism is preferable.

It's funny because it seems like you are out there seeking truth or understanding of society and that is literally what Marxism is. It has created a precise analysis of capitalism (and the history leading up to capitalism). It is the very thing you want and are trying to do, but instead of being vague it actually explains it.

It doesn't say "conspiracies" are real. It says "these specific conspiracies are likely real and here is why". There is a reason that Marxists are always able to know exactly what is going on behind the scenes or what will happen when a social event occurs. It is not because they are smarter than anyone, it is because they have the proper tools.

If it wasn't obvious I don't think they do that just that it's one interpretation of the words "conspiracy theorist" . It would be kind of fun if they did, although it would definitely devolve into calling each other spooks when they start disagreeing on methodology or which things are conspiracies.

You've given me a bunch to respond to but starting here just because it comes first-- but as your initial suggestion was that a conspiracy theorist "just believes the opposite of everyone else"-- I figured I'd start with the fundamentals.

That happens sometimes though

I am sort of curious what specifically Birdman thinks I have to learn from Marxism that I do not already know.
And again-- I took a number of sociology classes where Marx was required reading, took Political Philosophy, wrote papers on Marx in said classes, and have listened to Birdman talk about Marxism here for years.
I can not remember a time in my life when I did not know about Marxism-- sort of like George Washington.
So why study it now Birdman? What am I missing from it?

I think you should try answering my questions, for starters.

It wasn't my intention to get into some protracted discussion today-- only to say that I don't see myself as being somewhere on the road to becoming a Marxist. I'll address some of your questions in a bit although I feel like you already know most of what I'll say.

doomsday clock is 100 seconds to midnight

I have a question: why does Marx, in the second paragraph of Das Kapital, say:

"The nature of such [commodity-satisfied] wants, whether they arise, for instance, from the stomach or from imagination, makes no difference."

?


Don't biological and psychological wants have very different mechanisms of satisfaction?



It seems that the production of novelty (which isn't to go so far as the production of desire) is a perfectly tenable solution to the contradiction of overproduction.

Thoughts?

I don't see how you could know if you were on the road to becoming a Marxist if you don't seem to even understand what Marxism is. Or what your views are for that matter.