Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech
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@LetTheRedeemed said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
Yeah the intelligentsia of all of the west was entirely pro-communist — up to the top of the Roosevelt administration. All the cool people — from Hollywood to journalists to universities, were pro-communists. Lucile Ball was an example of communism sympathies, exhibited in the popular/cool crowds of the west. Not to mention the US govt funding them thru the Red Cross in Russia proper. The only people opposing them at the time was pre-war US state dept, the US navy, and the old untrendy WASPs of the aristocracy.
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Very well put.
I meant to elaborate on how communism or Fabian socialism etc. were A-OK for the ruling elite, oligarchs, pop culture icons, but not necessarily pushed onto the masses. The Congress for Cultural Freedom and things like Tavistock with the Beatles and 60s "beatniks" to me demonstrate a really layered approach to sowing chaos within the host cultures in western countries.
My thought is "Communism" and "Fascism" and "Liberal Democracy" can't really describe the sorts of power structures and governance the west or anywhere else is operating within. I guess "Populism" is a pretty good term which basically shows a "big tent" political movement that is defying previous party boundaries of Rep. or Dem. at least in the US but probably South America, while the Nationalist/Right parties in Europe are obviously using similar tactics.
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Yeah the intelligentsia of all of the west was entirely pro-communist — up to the top of the Roosevelt administration.
True, FDR was definitely sympathetic to Communism. His postwar counterparts much less so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot . Eventually those factions you mention did take back control in the US.
My thought is "Communism" and "Fascism" and "Liberal Democracy" can't really describe the sorts of power structures and governance the west or anywhere else is operating within.
You are in some sense correct. The battle now, as far as I see it, is waged between the descendants of these strains of thought.
Perhaps the most important geopolitical division is that between the Gnosticism of the West and, let's call it the, "Nomianism" of the East. One side (West Europe, America) upholds abstract personal freedom. Islam, Russia, China, all uphold a constant universally applicable truth, in their own ways.
It is my opinion that only a very severe international conflict can give success to new radical domestic perspectives.
Ok that's fine, but seriously, to think the Peatarian diet is not benefitting from the same exploitative third world labor it supposedly wants to replace is short-sighted.
Orange juice, coffee, fruit, coconut oil, chocolate, etc., is almost all coming from equatorial and poor countries.
This is true. Hence the application of Lysenkoism in the USSR, especially its preoccupation with frost-hardening of plants: https://archive.is/IC4Je
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@Rah1woot, wow you made me longpost. apologies.
I agree. I think "leftists" that aren't Communists are basically equal to Ben Shapiro. They're not a serious political position and they both end up supporting WEF Fascism.
I think it would help you to understand that fascism is populism.
It should also be clear that every populist movement is propaganda by the subversive forces who want to conquer the current regime. There is no true believer ruler of a populist coup. WEF fascism is where the original communist power brokers went. They never cared about Marx, they needed populism to advance their subversive motives. It's a parasitic class and no I'm not talking about Jews or bankers. This is where I think it would help to read about the French revolution. People who actuate regime change are a political class at odds with the current government.
These quotes describe it well:
“The French revolution therefore was the essentially chaotic and often violent process by which political power passed into the hands of those who already possessed economic power.”- Frederic V. Grunfeld
“The revolution was the culmination of a long social and economic development which… made the bourgeoisie the masters of the world.” - Georges Lefebvre
This is basically how every color revolution works.
The bourgeoisie are one of the first major classes that have wealth completely independent of the hierarchical context of the prevailing social order. These are often the people who are the actual "degenerate aristocracy."
Communists are just leftist populists. It’s two sides of the same populist coin. The revolutionaries (insert color revolution here and yes include the USA) tell the unrepresented masses they need representation, they then conquer the current regime, rinse and repeat. The “revolutionaries” then establish their own aristocracy because you can’t run anything without middle management, and kill off all the useful ideologues who helped them get there but are too radical to run a country.
It is Communist China that banned "effeminate men" on television. Semi-communist Russia which banned "LGBT Propaganda".
Ah, sorry, you missed my intention by that comparison (comments in a forum are terrible for writing treatises). My example above merely points out the nature of the two broad political categories in a deconstructionist world view. Deconstructing the old order never ends when you want to. This is why disaffected leftists keep getting pushed over to the right. eternal cultural deconstruction blew past their dream society in 1920, 1945, 1995, 2010, 2020, etc... Deconstruction of order (revolution) blew past communists who just wanted a loaf of bread and representación.
Today’s version of an aristocrat would’ve been called a whore by a self-respecting aristocrat anytime in the last 5,000 years.
@Rah1woot said:
Aristocracy imho does actually have a history of being degenerate. The French aristocracy of the 1700s is an easy example.(I'd like to see what percentage of the Noble estate were devout Catholic, and were not)
I readily concede There is a greater ability to degenerate with intelligence. It's almost a single line on a corollary line graph throughout history, haha. But this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the path to becoming the aristocracy. If you read about any of the revolutions, after the bloodbath of destroying the people who maintained stability in society, the winners packed positions with friends or people who were willing to backstab and murder anyone to get there. These people were less qualified in capability, dogs in comparison, and they were definitely willing to commit any act or sin that the old Regime's aristocracy, and all the peasants, would balk at. The brains behind the revolutions, have always been the upper middle class (bourgeoise), and the boots on the ground have always been the criminal underclass (of course any impressionable populations are recruited when the propaganda works).
Sure. Mao Zedong and George Washington are good examples of this [aristocratic character].
Mao and Washington were effective populist organizers, political opportunists and leftists of their time. The second they succeeded in destabilizing the old order, they established their new order/hierarchy.
They fit perfectly in the early deconstructionist spectrum. Washington is only like geographically removed from a proper hierarchical social order in mainland Europe, but deconstruction of social order in England had been ongoing for several hundred years at that point, due to proximity he looks like a proper aristocrat to us in 2024 (sans trousers and all). Also the monarch of England at the time had about as much power as it does today. Other than washington’s ownership of an actual plantation (which I have no knowledge of), I don’t actually understand what you mean by comparing them to my description of a communal patriarch/aristocrat, other than the fact that they replaced the prior aristocracy with themselves (via anti-aristocracy propaganda in their effective populist campaigns - savage civil wars).
Sure. I'm not the kind of so-called "leftist" that disparages capitalism from start to finish... it will still end. I want the aristocratic "form", if you will, of having free time, having strength and intelligence, having enough money to pursue work and projects beyond immediate survival, to expand to as many people as possible. The only program that works towards this is capital-C Communism, ending the financial domination made possible by overextended property rights for corporations. Ending PUFA ideology.
Ah, of course. I'm a fan of Marxist description, but not prescription. I gotta be honest, he's one man in history, fallible like us all... I encourage considering the philosophy being a product of his time, and that a lot of cool philosophies have existed that he probably didn't read about.
What I believe in, is basically what a peasant anywhere in the world prior to 1780s believed (you could append to that any rural laborer), is maintaining order, recognizing human difference as a real component in human order. If I can acknowledge there are people specialized by knowledge or capability that divides their labor/status (i.e. parents vs children), I can reasonably acknowledge others: surgeon vs auto-mechanic, and management vs worker.* management/worker context is a post-hierarchical social language. The worker is treated like trash compared to a peasant, and the manager got their via his own steal/kill/destroy mindset (yes many times merit), that someone with the divine right of God didn't need to do to accomplish. Sonship vs orphanhood economy.
No one is equal in any capacity, but all are equally deserving of human decency. So, traditionally, survival pressures placed on humanity required cooperation (ignore libertarian retardation that says it required rugged individuality, it required the opposite). Cooperation increased efficiency of human labor. Increased efficiency demands principles like discipline, sacrifice, submission to a smarter person, and the smarter person fighting on behalf of weaker people. Wars were once not necessarily populist, but explicitly royal, and the peasants, including military aged males, were considered labor assets of a realm, not meat grinder pawns (always exceptions of course).
I believe this is a law of nature, we see it down to the cell. We define cell intelligence/health, with it's ability to conformity and segregation. To be transient in skill, compromising in nature, is a rare skill of humans, but is most often a case of weakened people/things' incapability to handle complex/challenging situations.
(*** relevant to below) There is an esoteric argument to be had that the capacity to be a liberal//ideologue, correlates with intelligence/aristocracy, and that those people are best able to explore/pioneer a better world -- this is where religion of a society is paramount -- unfortunately the western aristocracy didn't follow this path with excellence.Insofar as the universe is expanding and the state of entropy consumes all things, Marx is correct. But insofar as entropy reaches a sweatspot utopia, Marx doesn't understand human behavior, or the war of entropy and order. As the lords of social stability are killed off, smaller microcosms of surviving lords will exist (Amish, Mormons, Hungary, etc), the broader population will continue to degenerate into increased self-survival mode, and lower intelligence.
With no good rationale, in my opinion, Marx says there must be ever degenerating society and war, until it gets better again. I just don't see any such thing as a source for spontaneous rebound from entropy, unless he's cynically predicting innocent desperate people beg for stability (hierarchical order) after their entire family gets killed by some later iteration of "for freedom, fraternity, and equality," and that's the only chance by which Marx could be right. Otherwise, he's ideologically excusing the needless murder of millions of people.
Ironically, he does pine for the time of the feudal era, as a genuinely good era for the good of the proletariat; he just thinks we can't return to it. I think he's thinking too small. No, many won't return to submission to hierarchical order, but fighting for order vs entropy in worlds we can affect (church/school), is something he missed that I think may have been a valid pushback. I wonder if he had contemporary critics who spoke such. Entropy is broader reaching today than he expected.
Your description of some kind of Epic Retvrn of Good Capitalism is a fantasy though. You are probably aware of that. The epistemology of right-ish people is always Gnostic, reaching outside the real. That is why they keep losing. Only an unconditional leap into the abyss that is reality, and the Future, might offer a way through.
I'm sure we'd need to define terms more, because I'm not a fan of capitalism or modern concepts of free markets.
Right wingers keep losing because they aren't as smart as left wingers. Game theory: when one wants to win a power or wealth not his own, he has everything to win by playing a long game. An attack where the castle doesn't know it's under siege is the deadliest attack of all.
PS, inspirational populist, Hitler, considered the Jewish cultural contributors in Germany like Felix Mendelssohn, feminizing to the German Volk. The nazis gained grassroots support in part due to the university book burnings by nazi students, instigated by the first sex change doctor in Berlin publishing a ton of material advocating it, and the prolific works of pro-homosexual and gender deconstructionism that took off in Germany in the last 20 years. The French revolutionaries considered the royal order and church as effeminate, and themselves as bringing vitality. The jacobin school of thought that gave them (and every subsequent revolution) its basic deconstructionist ideology, was the neoclassical glorifying Sparta and early Rome — “all men are equal warrior-kings" This is why the fasces and neoclassical construction is all over post-revolutionary France and USA. Deconstructionism starts with hating being told what to do by someone born into a position of authority, and ends with a rap music video in an American ghetto -- both are the same thing if you look hard enough.
(*** relevant to above) there is an esoteric argument to be made that the revolutionary soul is a disgruntled bourgeoisie -- him being insecure in his identity/insecure, because he stands outside hierarchy of a patriarch (the greatest source of masculine security for a male), and so projects masculinity exteriorly to compensate a lack of masculinity in the heart. This is the other side of the coin for the esoteric liberal arts. A contentedly masculine Noble man, discovers the Muse of femininity, and this produced the greatest art humanity has ever known, the baroque era.
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I will make an exercise of replying to your longpost in the most succint way I think appropriate.
As accused: your epistemology is Gnostic. You reference classical thermodynamics, and describe the historical process we both recognize, in order to make an argument that reality is inherently evil, and your ideas about it are better. The straightforward declaration you make is that the past was better than the present, and simultaneously any possible future. This is not what I think. Moreover, even if I thought otherwise, I would have no say in the matter of the vast differential equations, of what we might call the "Treason Cycle", that govern the process. All sentimentality is ultimately to be completely and utterly discarded in the face of Carl Schmitt's theory of the political. And this is exactly why rightoids always lose. They have sentimentality and not reality at their core, and this straightforwardly jeopardizes their war plans. The failed Austrian Painter, with his whiney, mopey, Mein Kampf. Luddites crushed beneath the heel of mass production.
But this is all the esoteric, even "cosmic" side of Communist thought. In the here-and-now, I straightforwardly advocate for the long-overdue obsolescence of the bourgeoisie in kind of their then-progressive revolution. Only what is Real has a right to exist. If your prized social hierarchy and differentiation of a sort is a necessary part of it all, as the Marxist-Leninists differentiate themselves from the Anarchists by, it will be shown out as well. Am I a deconstructionist? Sure. I want to be as radical as reality itself is, but not more, in the particular historical moment I'm in.
Now, some quotations and references.
https://info.publicintelligence.net/MCIA-ChinaPLA.pdf
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” Karl Marx
The basic question about the state is where its
legitimacy comes from. The monarch used to
speak for god, and his clergy backed him up.
Republics kept the basic idea of the state, and
invented a new story about its legitimacy. But the
new government is always founded by traitors to
the old government. Treason is the essence of the
state. Treason is legitimacy. Ray Peat, PhD -
@Rah1woot said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
This is true. Hence the application of Lysenkoism in the USSR, especially its preoccupation with frost-hardening of plants: https://archive.is/IC4Je
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This is a fascinating idea. I'm aware that much of the advanced science, biology, physics, etc was taking place in Soviet Russia and other Soviet countries. I think this is "in spite of" and not "because of" the governance system, though. For example, there is plenty of art or music from the Soviet era, but much of it conforms to certain aesthetic ideals. Schnittke came about in a more liberal time; Shostakovich supposedly lived in fear during Stalin's regime, for example. Physics, chemistry, and natural sciences were being developed in Germany throughout the 19th century. But I think Germany's importance was due to it's geographic centrality in Europe after the peak of colonialism and new industrialization, not because governance.
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@LetTheRedeemed said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
and this produced the greatest art humanity has ever known, the baroque era.
Neat post. But, I think the Romantic or "Late Romantic" era produced better art ;). Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler. The sciences and astronomy were also unhinged in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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@Rah1woot said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
Only what is Real has a right to exist.
Marxism and Socialism are limited by scientific materialism, just as much as a republic or democracy is. Parmenides is of some help when he states we can only talk about "what is." My issue is this: is language the only thing of importance? Our speech is willed into "is" too. If we say "nothing," then we have willed nonsense into existence. The moral guidebooks of any major religion are of course examples of language and often said to be the word of God, or the words from a source higher than everything and immutable.
The problem of the USA is like the problem of Rome - endless plunder, corruption, and little genuine innovation or self-sufficiency. The laws also become like the moral guidebooks of a religion ("sacred democracy"). My belief is the sham religion America is supposed to believe is a gnostic individualism (Harold Bloom), and, at the same time, a "sacred democracy" formed by the active "will of the people" who demand, and are entitled to "representation," like @LetTheRedeemed mentioned with the French Revolution and American Revolution.
The problem with this, I think, is that it is basically grand-scale solipsism. Cicero said "the more laws, the less justice." The US is large and isolating; the people hardly have any representation, so their will is hardly accounted for in any meaningful way.
We can see lately the many lunacies which have been given "a right to exist" because of the absurdly liberal interpretations of the 1st amendment. So, again, "freedom of speech" can be the freedom for the proliferation of nonsense. I guess I'm guilty of favoring education reforms that might better instill ideas of decency in language, as language is the tool of thought.
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@Corngold said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
@LetTheRedeemed said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
and this produced the greatest art humanity has ever known, the baroque era.
Neat post. But, I think the Romantic or "Late Romantic" era produced better art ;). Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler. The sciences and astronomy were also unhinged in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Imagine where science would be if the Victorian era evolved instead of died in war. I don’t know a whole lot about it but, what I understand is that science got captured and institutionalized lol.
Yeah I don’t think the appeal to beauty really ended until ww1
️ I’ve been listening to Tannhauser (overture) lately hehshare your fave piece from the romantic era!
Right now this is probably what I’ve been listening to the most from the baroque era lately:
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@Rah1woot You speak of reality, but it’s literally just an idea different than mine. It sounds like you just have more faith in your idea.
I totally admit I don’t understand a lot of the language in your post; feel free to expound, I did lol.
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I think science is definitely institutionalized, more so in certain disciplines than others, but generally all of it.
Generally Tristan und Isolde is great, Tannhäuser also. All of Bruckner's symphonies but definitely #6, #5, #8, #9, #3
Mahler symphony 7 is gaudy but really good, #3 is a masterpiece.I appreciate classical guitar; Spanish guitar music is a huge world I've only recently gotten into.
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My issue is this: is language the only thing of importance? Our speech is willed into "is" too. If we say "nothing," then we have willed nonsense into existence.
This is an excellent orientation towards the problem. It reminds me directly of the first chapters of "The Communist Postscript" by Boris Groys, and so I will link a clearnet audiobook starting at the right time in full.
https://youtu.be/ObQC0KCJba4?t=536
My belief is the sham religion America is supposed to believe is a gnostic individualism (Harold Bloom), and, at the same time, a "sacred democracy" formed by the active "will of the people" who demand, and are entitled to "representation," like @LetTheRedeemed mentioned with the French Revolution and American Revolution.
Yeah, that's a fair assessment. Formal legal representation, of course, is a dead horse ever since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The beating of this dead horse characterizes the "hyper-liberal" position, with its "intersectionality". I think beginning to challenge questions of debt and property is a much more sane approach: it was the case in many territorial governing documents in the United States (such as in Kentucky) that property was limited to actual human families and less so sprawling enterprises. "Gnosticism" and "solipsism" are my favored words for dealing with both this legalistic way of thinking, and the ahistorical way of thinking of the rightoids.
We can see lately the many lunacies which have been given "a right to exist" because of the absurdly liberal interpretations of the 1st amendment. So, again, "freedom of speech" can be the freedom for the proliferation of nonsense.
Mao Zedong basically said the same thing: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
I think "No Investigation, No Right To Speak" is a better concept for dealing with issues like scientific fraud (which was a much less relevant concept in the time of the founding fathers) than the 1st amendment.
The recognition of material reality as such is obviously a kind of idea. But it is very much a unique idea. Even the central idea one can have. Perhaps this is what the old monotheistic christians were aesopically referring to when they talk of "faith". In pure linguistic formalism it is not justifiable to speak of Reality as such. There is a ready reference to be made here with the concept of "knowing in the biblical sense". Sex as an experience is not formally communicable, and so it demonstrates the supremacy of real experience over language. Thus it acts as a kind of knowledge.
Paul Cockshott is one of my favorite Marxist-Materialist thinkers. I will leave a few links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ExkJhk7lA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOxfq2gOm4
Keywords for understanding the "letter of the law' of what I say: "historical materialism", "dialectical materialism". Engels gives a good description in "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific".
The "spirit of the law" is something found probably elsewhere. I think part of it for me was my engineering background and just how wonderfully the practice of engineering maps onto dialectics.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/fundamentals-marxism-leninism.pdf
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Oh my... I must be a closet communist.
Seriously though, "Oppose Book Worship" is a good read. It is pertinent for those wading in the sea of information and disinformation today.I see Wittgenstein and Heidegger as having a similar view on language. LW's "private language" argument is primitive but relevant and somewhat sets the stage for post-structuralism. Proper communication depends on terms whose meanings are agreed upon. And to agree upon a standard of meaning which can be communicated to others, one has to pretty much accept a limit of self-projection into language. Which, I think, to me, often means that effective communication is isolating and counter-intuitive. It is tautological, and really becomes a mere tool. I suppose this view has a strong Marxist angle. I believe Wittgenstein was long interested in Russia, and visited Moscow and Leningrad.
But that's quite the rabbit-hole - language as a mere tool which can be used by the state or by an economy, or any other social unit. It really does help us see through the political theater, though, I think, given how a politicians words, mannerisms, accents, ideas, and humor changes depending on the setting.
Western democracy is basically a realization of game theory. As in, the idea of competitive markets or capitalism is always strong vs weak. Price-fixing is the closest thing to a "win-win" where select monopolies can all profit equally. When there is uncertainty, each company has the schizo quality of being paranoid about competitors. The most successful must also be the most paranoid with a persecution complex, but also willingness to survive against the odds, which can simply be a will that goes beyond morals and laws (which I think is the case).
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@VehmicJuryman said in Ray Peat name drop during American Communist Party convention speech:
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." - Nikita Khrushchev
Well, Hitler also had been installing or attempting to install Nationalist parties in Hungary and Eastern Europe, France, Italy, etc.
My view is this war as with most others was clearly about money. My understanding is once again that Germany was not all that powerful, that these puppet colonies were not successful due to natural in-fighting and Socialist pressure from the East and native Jewry. The Allied powers saw their opportunity to divide and conquer the fascist / Axis territory. It wasn't about blood or ideology, totally a function of economics.
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What you said was nothing but facts
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Which, I think, to me, often means that effective communication is isolating and counter-intuitive.
Ray Peat in some quote I don't remember (where he described why it is that he stopped working on "flowery" art and prioritized biological work) worked with the definition of communication as being the transmission of information that makes a difference. I like that one. Nothing changes? Communication was not achieved. Even if an idea was transmitted.
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@Rah1woot
Interesting stuff. Yes and I suppose the paradox of anti-democratic "wrong" opinions and ideas is met with violence. Imperialism or Communism, both act on that impulse which is moral but also logical and rhetorical. -
Hey @Rah1woot thanks for the videos, checking them out before I comment
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Paul Cockshott is one of my favorite Marxist-Materialist thinkers. I will leave a few links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ExkJhk7lA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOxfq2gOm4Thanks for the links; I think I don't really have much to disagree with, as I'm not pro-capitalism, or anti-social welfare -- I guess I didn't make it very clear in my earlier comment, but that's a modern American right wing phenomenon, and not consistent with historical, or global conservatism today. I didn't see anything disagreeable in the material history of Marx, either. I believe Marx saw the world in a really novel and useful manner.
I think for the discussion to move usefully forward, can we agree on the below quote as a rough summary of Marxism?
"Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually destroy itself as more people become relegated to working-class status, inequality rises, and competition drives corporate profits to zero." via investopedia (that's also what I had remembered from my research like 15 years ago)
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@LetTheRedeemed Yes, I would agree with that summary. As I've sort of pointed at it has already largely happened especially considering that Marx was working in the 19th century. Capitalism arguably ended in 1929, and continued to end. Blackrock owns everything, but who owns blackrock in kind? The pension funds, et cetera. Capitalism in the US today is financialized and "superstructural", dependent overwhelmingly on beliefs held in the brain ("credo" as the root of "credit") rather than objective conditions of social production.
So the revolutionary act remaining is to recognize this state for what it is.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2023041pap.pdf