[deleted]
The Opium of the Intellectuals
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#12A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. Much (but certainly not all) of Marxism has held up rather well in retrospect (especially teh critique of capitalism), especially in the conditions we face in 2020.
> A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. The real opiate of the intellectuals is any system that gives you the belief that you've got things mostly figured out. Neo-liberalism definitely qualifies for some, but so does Marxism. However, given the current state of things, there's probably more value to be had now from reading Marx than some venerable free market tract. Just…
Oh sure, there's very serious problems with orthodox Marxism. It gets somewhat of a pass because all historical communist regimes have started far before capitalism had run its course (which even now it hasn't necessarily). However, the dictatorship of the proletariat is just something I cannot buy ever working out without the revolutionary vanguard just turning into the new masters.
This is a critique that left-anarchists have always had of Marxisms. However, Marxism also has a point that a complete economic overturning is impossible without force, necessitating a vanguard anyway. So, I don't think anyone can remotely say what comes after our economic system.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#13If you’re reading this, run. There is no value in these comments.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#14I think The Grand Scheme is the opiate of the intellectuals, and some regimes are friendlier to such schemes than others. If you have a set of top down rules that require your will to be imposed on others, a flatter hierarchy is a bug. A decentralized system like free market capitalism allows many tyrants to flourish, but petty ones in comparison. You want a central authoritarian who can materialize your wishes. Whether that authority is right or left wing is subsidiary. Marxism has just been a convenient vehicle for such schemes, as it has had considerable momentum, and its authoritarianism is somewhat cloaked.
The best antidote for this opiate is probably humility: the awareness that maybe, given the details on the ground, you don't have a one-size-fits-all solution that's better than what people chose for themselves. But many intellectuals seem to have unusual resistance to this medicine.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#15It's awesome to see criticisms of Marxism on the one hand attack its rigid dogmatism, and on the other hand attack its vague, mystical dialectics.
I've been a marxist for 10 years and it's extremely rare to see a criticism of Marx that accurately describes the ideas of scientific socialism. Probably the best is Dr Shapiro from Yale: https://youtu.be/s6MOA_Y3MKE
Even he professes to have discoved "fatal" flaws in Marx which I don't think are actually fatal, and maybe don't even agree with. But overall he at least gives an honest, and critical account. He practically stands alone in this regard.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we are going to start tallying the body counts of economic ideologies, I think you will find capitalism and its inherent imperialism to be very much in the lead.
I think the above comment was written to the tune of "Jokingly trying to employ reverse-psychology to get Hacker News users to read literature" rather than serious. No one uses the term "free thinker" unironically.
It's also rare to hear an unironic call to "dumb down."
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#17I think The Grand Scheme is the opiate of the intellectuals, and some regimes are friendlier to such schemes than others. If you have a set of top down rules that require your will to be imposed on others, a flatter hierarchy is a bug. A decentralized system like free market capitalism allows many tyrants to flourish, but petty ones in comparison. You want a central authoritarian who can materialize your wishes. Whet…
It's obvious you don't know anything about Marx because you are contrasting "top down rules" (allegedly communism) to a "decentralized" capitalism.
Even a cursory reading of Marx would dispel both mistakes.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#18A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. Much (but certainly not all) of Marxism has held up rather well in retrospect (especially teh critique of capitalism), especially in the conditions we face in 2020.
You'll always have people who support one set of ideas over another as long as there's enough ambiguity/uncertainty in critical factors to sway one way or another. Actually it seems to be even deeper than that (e.g. "flat earthers").
In this case, evidence that requires time to collect and events to play out are a realm of uncertainty and ambiguity are frequently played on when comparing capitalism to historic other systems we know "didn't work."
At the same time, you'll have many who understand that those levels of uncertainty and ambiguity can be gamed to their favor and will support which ever options of the uncertain benefit them the most, regardless of what they may believe to be true.
For some reason were so confident and or arrogant that we "have it right" while others have it wrong. Meanwhile, we look at macroscopic trends that are toxic and continue preaching dogma.
When we talk about the scale of economic systems and societies, there's a lot of uncertainty of how any axiomatic rules result in macroscopic/emergent behaviors that we see. It's so complex it's often incredibly difficult to look at macroscopic behaviors we dont want as a society and walk them back to first principles or lower order principles that causes the issue to fix them. For some reason though, it feels like as society we don't try to fix them or those who play on uncertainty and fear to their advantage seem to always win everyone over.
Capitalism is extremely good at a lot of optimization problems and squeezing out efficient solutions. The issue is that it has to be well constrained to optimize for what we want and not optimize for things we don't value as society. General health and well being seems to be one of those factors we're not optimizing well for.
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#19I think The Grand Scheme is the opiate of the intellectuals, and some regimes are friendlier to such schemes than others. If you have a set of top down rules that require your will to be imposed on others, a flatter hierarchy is a bug. A decentralized system like free market capitalism allows many tyrants to flourish, but petty ones in comparison. You want a central authoritarian who can materialize your wishes. Whet…
It's obvious you don't know anything about Marx because you are contrasting "top down rules" (allegedly communism) to a "decentralized" capitalism. Even a cursory reading of Marx would dispel both mistakes.
In Marx's own time, he was one of the main people who split the workers movement between his own ideas (his form of Communism) and the anarchist ideas of Bakunin or of Proudhon. People saw the authoritarian prospects of his work in his own time. They all want the same thing - a world without hierarchy. Though it's a great irony that one method relies on hierarchies to try to achieve a "stateless, classless society"
Maybe that term "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was a mistake. Stalin and Mao were proletarians, after all...
Re: The Opium of the Intellectuals
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. The real opiate of the intellectuals is any system that gives you the belief that you've got things mostly figured out. Neo-liberalism definitely qualifies for some, but so does Marxism. However, given the current state of things, there's probably more value to be had now from reading Marx than some venerable free market tract. Just…
Oh sure, there's very serious problems with orthodox Marxism. It gets somewhat of a pass because all historical communist regimes have started far before capitalism had run its course (which even now it hasn't necessarily). However, the dictatorship of the proletariat is just something I cannot buy ever working out without the revolutionary vanguard just turning into the new masters. This is a critique that left-anar…
This is what I always wondered. Where does the claim to political legitimacy come from if force is required?