kwomp2

I agree with you about most people not understanding their social structural sorroundings sufficiently to lead their (collective) lives in a souvereign way.

But this is not a primarily cognitive problem. Just as much it is rooted in the social structure itself. One must take into account: Which opportunities does a given act of thinking and understanding provide an individual?

In an individualized and individualizing political, ecological, cultural landscape, understanding things critically often is fruitless. For example to ensure social affiliation or navigate through the market specifique concepts, notions and sorts of "truth" are productive. Analyzing your culture to find collective paths of historic development require different scopes.

Praxeology might be a notion you could enjoy exploring.

IMO this is important if you want both, get of the high horse and fly the mighty dragon of critique.

I wonder what those people claim they keep politics and science seperated. You know, because if you get a lab coat you're immune

I think of it like this:

Lacking fundamental critique of the political economy, they believe the liberal narrative of the market and democratic institutions would bring about a fair or good economy.

Either you stop believing that, wich comes with quite a reorientation towards your own society, history and biography with significant social consequences ("what are you, a socialist now?) and mental stress (radical opposition is not exactly calming).

...or you assume there is something disturbing your otherwise functioning order and ideology from the outside. Damn those immigrants, if it it wasn't for them there would be more jobs, higher wages, less crime and I'd finally get all that trickle down.

This latter is the energetically more efficient choice for each individual, and importantly, this really is true - as long as there is no collective perspective of systemic change, wich of course in turn only materializes when people make their bet for the possible, not the actual.

This perspective doesn't really exist atm, it's not in sight and nobody talks about it. This is the result of anticommunism and a massive failure of the left.

We need to be couragous and make room for utopian thought while giving opportunities to experience and try solidaric socialization. This makes not being idiot a convincing alternative.

I think it was not only those material conditions but also a deterministic ideology or maybe just power hungry leaders. (Good cue for taking the democracy part very serious from the beginning, because non or semi-democratic structures attract and create dictator-subjects, and projecting yourself outside that dialectic is as naive as it is arrogant)

Shooting thousands (or hundreds of thousands, as my hasty wikipedia research suggests) of the opposition, both left and right, is no matter of slow industrialization.

Admittedly I'n not fit in soviet history, but the combo of "oh they had democratic infrastructure" and secret deportation, incarceration and murder of even leftist opposition doesn't sit right. And honestly, calling that "not perfect" feels like violation of emancipatory writing of history and way of living.

Thanks. I read the tayangyu essay, and kinda liked it, but it didn't really answer my questions..

Isn't the author leaving the framework of dialectical thinking when they dismiss the relevance of ideas almost entirely in favor of material economical factors?

As in: Couldn't have the development of productive forces happened with more participation?

Wouldn't than the emergence of a democratic or collective subject have been faaaar more likely, even though and because people would have been confronted with the limits of economic development, as agents, not just as objects of that one and only party's decisions?

Okay sorry regarding stalin i mixed that up. It's in the other reading list in the comments here.

On "conduct yourself" dunno, maybe this boils down to writing style. But the ML sort of theoretical style plus the horrors of undemocratic socialist history do make it important to stress the emphatic (as in: since critical theory and french subjectivity theory we debunked "individual freedom", but still need to keep it as a goal) part of personal freedom & choice. That wording above doesn't show that kind of self reflection imo.

Gramsci! The concepts of hegemony and "senso commune" (sry dont know english translation) are essential to analyse current events. Also this protects lefties from babbling about classes in a way that alienates them from everyone just observing whats going on.

(Senso commune and gramscis notion of intellectuals also offers a neat way through the whole "get educated since otherwise you fundamentally don't understand your own life"- rhethoric dilemma/arrogance issue)

You need secondary literature for gramsci though. He left 3000 pages of unstructured notes from fascist prison. You don't wanna go through that. Unfortunetly I have no idea of english publications. Barfuss & Jehle Einführung is nice, in case you speak german.

Just wrote this somewhere else. Maybe this is where it belongs: Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I'd advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts or critical theory are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good'ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I'm sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)

Also "how to conduct yourself as a leftist" sound strict af and kinda deterministic.

Plus there is no need to give stalin's voice that kind of space.

Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I'd advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good'ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I'm sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)

Also "how to conduct yourself as a leftist" sound strict af and kinda deterministic.

"Strawman" - and then you just go with "vegans"... so all? Most? Some? Or maybe just the tiniest percentage? I think you understand for wich ones my argument applies and how "strawman" doesn't, cause numbers. You know, if you pay attention..

Ok lets cut the rhetorics, I was trying to be sincere. I think you might wanna pay some more of that attention (omg sry I stop now) to "dialectic". This does explicitly not mean you can turn the thing around and solely look at the other side.

So of course no change ever happens if all those one persons don't do anything. But they will only change history if they change the underlying structures. To do so, they have to overcome their individualistic constriction and reach collective agency.

You gotta organize. The market won't do, since it is THE form of organization that makes everyone a single player. Both, in their acting and in their consciousness.

This statement (about everyone single personal effort) only becomes meaningful when you take into consideration why people don't. If you do, you will encounter the dialectics of structure and "personal choice" and how complicated history is and how it is not at all about "everybody make a small change in their life".

The liberal feverdream of individual solutions for structural problems is bound to end up in "I buy good groceries".

And, eventhough veganism is a good thing to do, this is why I'm personally so annoyed by vegan communities.

I dont know if reducing your personal sin count or whatever is a substitute for radical critique and political action, or an add-on, so I didn't downvote. But maybe it explains some of it.

Nein ich und mein Intelligenzvehikel sind ganz alleine autonom. Ich brauche niemanden um von A nach B zu kommen. Ich bin eine selbstgemachte Person.

No great wisdom either, but my main thought about this is that games are designed to keep your dopamine coming (maybe overly nature scientific way of saying: they are exciting, rewarding).

Other activities can do that to, but some are rewarding in a more subtle way or more on a long term. Like, not "ringring yOu fOuNd DIAMOND!!". So in comparison with games they might not trigger your motivation (dopamin?) as quickly.

On the other hand they are probably better at making you feel more general connectedness, belonging, sense, emotional diversity, etc.

So my advice (wich I struggle alot to follow myself) is: Avoid or limit the other dopamine traps like random scrolling and give yourself and the not-designed- for-dopamine-optimization-world some time, some patient goodwill. This might make that good ol' world shine bright enough to not get bored all the time.