Has there ever been a more inconsequential and ineffectual political theory than communitarianism?Liberalism has it so easy when all it has to deal with are limp-wristed attempts at criticism that amount to nothing but skirting around the question of equality. Is this or that tradition conducive to equality? No wonder, because half of these communitarians are just crypto marxists who want equality but also some spice to give meaning to their meaningless lives.
The problem with all “post-left” theories of post-capitalist society is that it all derives from the trauma of experiencing the mid 20th century down and dirty practice of actually having to do politics. The Stalin period and shit like the 1956 crackdown on Magyar mobs going around lynching every jew they could find in Budapest basically destroyed the Western Left and it really fundamentally was that they got scared. I actually recommend every Marxist or left wing person or even anti-communists go read a short memoir called “Molotov Remembers”. Go read it and think really hard if you actually are serious about any of this stuff. If you are, great, prepare for the real possibility of being shot and thrown into a mass grave to be forgotten to history, or prepare for the effort it takes to avoid that happening. All the shit you hear about the Stalin period is a matter of perspective, the bolsheviks were killing each other for very real, very good reasons, some of which got buried, some openly broadcast in party publications, but nevertheless all for very good reasons, by different factions, not because they were looney tunes villains or whatever. If that sounds awful, you don’t believe me, or you have some religious thing about innate goodness in humanity go do something else with your life. All the communitarianism or libertarian socialism or the democratic socialism or whatever flavor of the decade thing are movements of cowardice. Marx said shit like you need to tutor the working class via 40 years of civil wars. Lenin said turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Alaisdair Macimtyre got scared by 1956 and was like uh uh I convert to Catholicism now. I’m not involved with left politics because 1) it’s all retarded and 2) if it wasn’t 99% of the time you end up executed by the state once it gets real. Politics is natural selection.
>>24836862Read Lasch. Lasch gets grouped in with communitarians but makes populist arguments against it as well.
>>24836862And it also depends on what you mean by liberalism. Liberalism once defended private autonomy in its older forms but thanks to chumps like Mill it ended up advocating a utilitarian safety net, liberalism died when it broke with its Kantian roots.
>>24837456Not to say that safety nets are bad per se, but its no longer "purist" liberalism which would be best served by a unifying principle of ethnic or religious solidarity.
>>24837368Ironically, Catholicism can be pretty hard-headed itself, aware that sometimes you have to fight for the survival of Christendom. At least, the older Catholics could be that way. Marx arguably comes from that same milieu, the world that knew sometimes blood wound up in the dirt. The Postwar world is a soft one.
>>24837368Great post, realizing this is what helped me leave the left. Any left-wing theory that isn't just rebranded Keynesianism entails a massive revolution that has a good chance of killing you, either in the war itself or by whatever government is installed. You'd have to be willing to endure decades of constant war and sectarian massacres just to reach that goal of a global stateless classless utopia, which most people probably wouldn't even be happy with if they somehow reached that point. You're essentially throwing yourself towards death just for a dream that, if you survive, you won't even see in your lifetime. I think that deep down, most leftists don't really want that, so they either become detached critics with unimplementable ideologies or form larp parties that never make any effort to actually seize power. I don't want that either, and I hope those who are actually serious about revolution and want to throw us into those struggles are stopped by any means necessary.
>>24836862MacIntyre wasn't a communitarian.
>>24837801So what have you become instead? I am curious.
>>24837668retard AI slopper.
>>24837368It's not that the 1956 revolt was antisemitic per se, it just happened that jews were overrepresented among the secret police by the factor of like 15 or 20 compared to their demographic percentage, so when people hunted for members of the secret police, the people they would lynch would often happen to be jewish due to that overrepresentation. Poland and Romania had similar stats among their communist secret police.
>>24837914Cope, atheist commieYou ALWAYS lose in the end.
>>24837368>>24837801adding onto this, having niche/extremely specific beliefs let you morally excuse yourself from the consequences of said beliefs it's very easy to say your hyper specific type of communism (or realistically any form of communism) is the right path forward because you know you will never have to stand on it, never have to defend its very real flaws because deep down you know it will never ever come to fruitionand of course they believe their system would solve every single societal ill, meaning they never have to engage or wrestle with those ill, it's just "my system would fix it man"
>>24838255In the end there is a lack of people in this world who are both intellectual enough to have a really strong worldview and simply ruthless enough to do whatever it takes to carry it out. They're not very common. Do you know how rare somebody like Lenin is?
>>24838257the reality is that communism is a product of a very specific time in history in, related to a very specific people in a very specific part of the world, much like (actual) fascism you can't just bring it into 2025are there even any famous communist or even socialist intellectuals left? zizek has been quietly unpersoned, chomsky is dead (I think?)multiculturalism really is the great leveler
>>24838271What IS left, anyway? What's still around?Islam?The Church?Trump?China?Who's driving the motion of the affairs of the World Spirit, in 2025?Israel too, maybe?
>>24838334I mean yeah the left doesn't really exist in a substantive sense anymore, even though its propaganda pervadesit's nothing but ressentiment and third worldism (which is also just ressentiment) now
>>24838476I do not understand how everybody's goal at this point isn't just to kill the United States.America is the clog in the drain of History. The United States IS Fukuyama's End of History, Fukuyama when he diagnosed the End of History in his book was basically acting as a cheerleader for American Hegemony. Liberal democracy, neoliberal captialism, as the endgoal of historical process, what does that actually look like, if not the USA on top of everything?If this is not your goal you should want the United States to be violently annihilated because it is acting as a bulwark and a hairclog in the drain of historical processes.Catholics should want the United States destroyed.Communists should want the United States destroyed.Fascists should want the United States destroyed.Russians should want the United States destroyed.Chinese should want the United States destroyedAnCaps should want the United States destroyed.Pro-Europeans should want the United States destroyed.Muslims should want the United States destroyed.We all know what the problem is, let's just get together and KILL THE BITCH. Wipe the Americans out. If we all got together and did it we could do it, and we'll settle things peacefully or otherwise in the aftermath. Just butcher the United States. It's easier than you think and it'll facilitate a lot of things.
>>24837368I agree that the movements are defined by a pacifying trauma but I wonder how 'incorrect' the belief they hold (that it's possible to enact positive change through peaceful, reformist measures) really is. I guess in a way these guys return to a more Hegelian view of progressive change than the ruthless, disciplined, warring communists of old.
>>24838614>I do not understand how everybody's goal at this point isn't just to kill the United States.because people will die, you moron. you not know how insane you sound? normies will never accept your position. and geographically, that's impossible because of our unique position between two large oceans. unless you're implying Russia should invade via the Bering strait, which you've successfully blown your cover.
>>24837368> the bolsheviks were killing each other for very real, very good reasonsStalin had the entirey of the old guard Bolsheviks executed because he was either paranoid or wanted to consolidate power, both of which are either stupid or self serving reasons. It's not just that left revolutionaries have to reckon with the fact that people will die during and after the revolution so that it can happen, they also have to reckon with the fact that 20th century communist leaders were a bunch of incompetent, bloodthirsty sadists.
>Has there ever been a more inconsequential and ineffectual political theory than communitarianism?Distributism.
>>24838614They have nukes anon, they would torch the world the moment they looked like losing.
>>24836862virtue needs some sort of metaphysical teleology, else it's ultimately sophisticated aesthetic nihilism (lipstick on a corpse).Theosis.If you attribute virtues to being of Christ, rather than anthropocentrically secular, than you give purpose and meaning for humanity to follow the Virtues to be like-Christ, a god among men.This can be explained to a child as: "If you follow the virtues, then you will be godlike."Live a life that God remembers your name.
>>24836862>Has there ever been a more inconsequential and ineffectual political theory than communitarianism?Lenin's "conspiratorial party of a new type" is endlessly chimeric. This is just the continuation Cold War in a new and more friendly form. The world 'socialism' needn't be used if it makes the enemy aware. Was The New Economic Policy Period 'state capitalism' in actuality or intent?>>24837368>the bolsheviks were killing each other for very real, very good reasons, some of which got buried, some openly broadcast in party publications >... If that sounds awful, you don’t believe me, or you have some religious thing about innate goodness in humanity go do something else with your life. All the communitarianism or libertarian socialism or the democratic socialism or whatever flavor of the decade thing are movements of cowardice. >... . Lenin said turn the imperialist war into a civil war.fpbp. "Revelations. I am doing that." -- Stalin to a priest he was a washout Seminarian, after all The Germans are *also* demonized for having successfully CONVERGED against Capitalism (and them) from the Right. The trick is that the ComIntern has arrogated to itself all the bêtes noires of the Fabians and Eugenicists, and there's not a Luddite bone in any Party vanguard with a brain or operational nous then or today . . . >the problem with all “post-left” theories of post-capitalist society is that it all derives from the trauma of experiencing the mid 20th century down and dirty practice of actually having to do politics. The Stalin period and shit like the 1956 crackdown on Magyar mobs going around lynching every jew they could find in BudapestThe uniquely schizophrenic Russian mind that can today unironically (re)adopt 'chekist' anti-semitism, Lord Milner & Jacob Schiff Anglo-American [trotskyist] conspiracy narratives, the hyper-holocaust victims of talmudery built on cult sacrifice of the Romanovs-- it finds a narcissistic naval-gazing theorycel antipode in the West: they are agents of destabilization, useLESS idiots, traitors and cowards all. >>24837801>deep down, most leftists don't really want that, so they either become detached critics with unimplementable ideologies or form larp partiesIt's what they nonetheless work towards by making the West (America) vulnerable to One Clenched Fist. A Manchurian Candidate ballot stuffed via a bioweapon has already been taken on the chin with little *apparent* consequences. >>24837921>It's not that the 1956 revolt was antisemitic per seHungary and Czechia were completely AstroTurf'd by security elements and goaded into a demonstration of overwhelming force, nearly all the defectors speak of this. Even the 'Sino-Soviet Split' upon which the demonstrably false and suicidal Kissinger Doctrine continues to be delpoyed raises massive questions as to its veracity (with pre-unalived Generals and their staff,conveniently force landed across the border)
>>24838614>If only the Demiurge Uncle Sam ...This is decadence and why it (reds) must fail. America literally hasn't had independent - from Britain and EU - monetary policy until 2019, the installation of Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve, and finally removing itself from LIBOR to SOFR after a decade of obstruction since the Subprime crisis. It's far more insidious and pervasive than this fairy tale anti-'imperialist' phantasy paradigm, doubly so when persons and powers forget its cynical origins and self-serving purpose.
>>24839076>virtue needs some sort of metaphysical teleology, else it's ultimately sophisticated aesthetic nihilismTell that to the buddhists. Also, most virtue ethicists, except the stoics, are just sophisticated hedonists.
>>24839076But the metaphysics of christianity actually refer back to nothing. God has no form.
>>24837368> It is said that Stalin and Molotov considered only themselves to be true Leninists.>There was no alternative. Had we not regarded ourselves as Leninists, and had we not attacked those who wavered, we could have been weakened. For a self proclaimed republic, the Soviets truly had one of the worst attitudes when it came to the public interest. It is possible for an oligarchy (as is with the case with the nomenklatura) to tend to the matters of res publica with great effect, but this is just a shameful display. Complete devolution into angry primal Hobbesianism.
>>24837887I guess I'd consider myself a neoreactionary, not in the sense that I actively desire some Hoppean monarchy larp, but moreso in the sense that I think that humans are dependent on transcendentals that revolutionaries falsely believe can be overcome. Whether that transcendental be God, Tao, the Faustian Invisible Hand, or some sort of fundamental ontology, I think our political and economic history point to us being driven by something higher than just humanity. As such, I remain pretty skeptical of any particular political ambition, and I don't really affirm any sort of program beyond a general opposition to humanism and revolution.
>>24836862this author was better
>>24837368holy trvke
>>24839412>God has no form.He's a Dude name Jesus Christ for Christ sake...We are literally made in His Form: Human.
>>24839417To be fair, marxism tends to frame everything in an extremely existential light, turning everything into a vicious death struggle.
>>24839429Still what would you say about transcendence religions like buddhism and even certain daoists? There, something worldly is being transcended purportedly. It's not really compatible at all with western revolutionary ideologies like marxism, those being essentially worldly, but still.
>>24839429do you like Joseph de Maistre?
>>24839597I like Taoism, I think that in some sense, it already found what Heidegger would later try to uncover. You find this sort of apophatic ground of Being in which beings are brought forth, but that Being itself eludes conceptualization. That sort of idea is particularly useful for political economy, destroying the notion of autonomous human actors, and I hope the rise of China allows for Taoism (and Confucianism) to gain greater appreciation as a lens of analysis. I unfortunately don't know much about Buddhism besides Madhyamaka, but I'm open to learning about other traditions if you have any recommendations. >>24839637I like his ideas from what I've heard about him, but to be quite honest with you, I haven't read anything by him. I'd like to once I finish reading Carlyle's French Revolution.
>>24839281>most virtue ethicists>except the stoics>are just sophisticated hedonistsone could argue that stoics are a type of ethical hedonists that "get off" on feeling morally superior to those they deem as inferior in virtue/willpower.it's a stretch, but a case nonetheless.
>>24837368Seeing the reception to this post, I just want to clarify that 1) left wing politics in the west is retarded currently but that will perhaps change because state repression is a good teacher and 2) yes communism is the immense exertion of human willpower within History to establish something new but I have nothing against that exertion in the same way I have nothing against events of natural history such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Communism collapsed but history marches on and it will eventually return from some subaltern that has no mystifications and “nothing to lose.” I merely meant to juxtapose the sheer cowardice of the majority of leftists in the west with the frank, realist politics of a Molotov and that no leftist grad student is remotely prepared to unromantically defend a revolution much less organize one. Im politically quietist because I don’t want to die but I have zero illusions about the future unlike so many fake leftists and these whiny /lit/ anti-communists who moralize about communist excess as if massive social cataclysms and the creative destruction of the Angelus Novus cares about your petty interests and creature comforts.
>>24839687>Taoism (and Confucianism)These things have historically been at odds with each other. Also, China's state ideology is a western one whose primary goal is freedom and the gratification of people's desires.
>>24840214Thankfully, history has no rationale behind it and people who think otherwise are just delusional.
>>24840059One cannot actually argue this in any coherent way. Stoicism says that one should do one's duty and be virtuous without passion. Eithout passion entails no getting off. In fact, it is impossible fpr a stoic sage to get off to the idea that he is getting less worldly pleasure than a hedonist.
>>24840214There was nothing very realistic about the schizos in the USSR. Marxism already frames everything in an extremely existential light and is conducive to paranoia and rash undertakings. It does this because it is a strictly materialist/wprldly ideology which states that the only thing that matters in life is milking out as much enjoyment as physically possible and anything that obstructs it is literally a plague trying to kill you and needed to be destroyed yesterday. Such retardation is just inherent to leftism, but the main reason you do not see it expressed as much as it was back in the day is due to further developments in grievence politics, like feminism, and leftists being exposed to the fact that existence is actually much more complex than Marx made it seem like. Also, society has changed and now workers are actually primarily consumers
>>24840059>oh yeah, but they probably do it too?People who say this are always just excusing their own wicked traits and behavior. A perfect argument for enforcing buddhistic fascism.
OP here. It's amazing how communitarianism is so obscure that people here would rather try to tie it with communism than actually talk about their silly attempts at defending "tradition" while also clinging to equality.
>>24839687Where does the daodejing talk about being?
>>24841190>>24841202I dun told yas it was a stretch.But there's always aesthetics chasers in movements. How many Christians are "Christian"?One must be authentic to their true God(s), no?
>>24839016Why because it works? Schopenhauer was right. Humans revel in being miserable.
