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Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

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Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#71

Post by dalbasal »

When Tom Morello (RATM & Audioslave guitarist) is interviewed the tension between rich rockstar and firebrand anarchist usually provokes some sort of political exchange that ends in "if you're such a communist, why do you X?" To which, he normally responds "I live in capitalist... when the revolution comes..., I'll take part in however music works then."

I've seen him have this dialogue several times. My guess is that he's done it hundreds of times. That's the definition of the word "trite." The obvious champagne socialist firebrand dialogue has been had, in the same way, for generations now. Oscar Wilde. etc.

This article does mention "champagne populists" as a type example from the political right. The other obvious comparison is "champagne religion," preaching chaste poverty while indulging like epicurean hedonism.

Despite being trite, I think there genuinely is something to "if the shoe fits." Engels like other socialists & epicurean hedonists (eg chris hitchens) "get away" with church marriages or baptisms. It's hypocritical in theory but no one cares. Priests get away with greed, but not with hedonism. Hedonistic hypocrisy sticks to religion in a way that religious hypocrisy does not stick to epicureans & socialists. Neither wealth nor hedonism generally sticks to the "populist," but failure does.

Anyway... I do think that champagne shaped socialism in a negative way, personally. The position of Engels, Wilde and others pushed the ideas in certain directions. They tended to see communism as an indivisible. A slice of communism had no value... otherwise why not use their resources to create a slice of it themselves. Total revolution, or none at all. Seemingly unresolveable conflict at every turn breeds "singularity" thinking.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

jevgeni wrote: post #48
dragonwriter wrote: post #39

> Of course, Engels is far from the only example of the leftist firebrand whose inherited wealth insulated him from the struggles of ordinary working people Yeah, it's kind of to be expected: theorists (firebrand or not) are for obvious reasons disproportionately of the intelligentsia, and under capitalism (or the modern mixed economy) even the proletarian intelligentsia (much less the petit and, even moreso, haut bo…

That’s not the same as living in excess while preaching solidarity.

> That’s not the same as living in excess while preaching solidarity.

Engels living in excess while preaching solidarity, you will note, is not the point I said was to be expected. Engels being one of many examples of the pattern “leftist firebrand whose inherited wealth insulated him from the struggles of ordinary working people”, was.

OTOH, Engels preached revolution against capitalism not financial solidarity within capitalism, and that the harm of capitalism was inherent its fundamental structure, not something that could be meaningfully mitigated or remediated by “good behavior” within the privileged classes while capitalism continued.

It's not surprising that opponents of his philosophy want to attack him with the ad hominem that he is a hypocrite; it's odd, though, to accuse him of being a hypocrite to a position that he and Marx condemned as a retrograde one which served to reinforce the capitalist order.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#73

Post by jevgeni »

dragonwriter wrote: post #72
jevgeni wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the same as living in excess while preaching solidarity.

> That’s not the same as living in excess while preaching solidarity. Engels living in excess while preaching solidarity, you will note, is not the point I said was to be expected. Engels being one of many examples of the pattern “leftist firebrand whose inherited wealth insulated him from the struggles of ordinary working people”, was. OTOH, Engels preached revolution against capitalism not financial solidarity with…

Still not the same as living in excess, though.

You are justifying Engel's being exploitative to his own workers, while he himself knew it was essentially theft, according to their own theories. What could justify such theft? Well, "entertainment". He didn't choose to send that money to the International to promote systemic change. Nonono, he willingly chose to spend it on his own pleasures to the detriment of the people working for him. At least according to his own theories. So either Engels himself was immoral, or communism doesn't have any moral superiority over capitalism. See, you can choose whether that argument is ad hominem or generally applicable. :D

This is the whole reason they needed a revolution. If communism was truly a superior form of economic organization, then it wouldn't matter if it was applied to whole societies or smaller groups. In other words, a company organized by communist principles would be more competitive than a company organized purely by naked capitalism. You can't get people on board in evolutionary manner, if you yourself can't get organized by these principles. If your own company can't be communist and survive, why would it work on a scale of a whole country or the whole world? This is why they needed it to be violent and irreversible. It's a massive swindle to get power and it was thought out.

It boggles my mind, that people devalue legitimate left thought by staning charlatans. But people also voted for Trump because he is "a man of the people", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#74

Post by dalbasal »

rogue7 wrote: post #63
dalbasal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wilde (who lived 500m from where I stand) was a nuanced user of absurdity. I think what made him stand out in his day actually was that fact. He casually reflects on absurdities, contradiction, and their prerequisites rather than burying them. What Wilde is doing in this essay is giving credence to counterarguments, either between socialism and individualism or between socialism and his own, famously hedonistic chara…

> They conceded nothing and admitted no external influences In the case of Marx this is inaccurate. Indeed, in Das Kapital he develops the Labor theory of value [0] from earlier works of David Ricardo and ... Adam Smith. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

Absolutely. I think you have me backwards. Marx's economics are a pretty straightforward response to Ricardo. He himself mostly alluded to Ricardo as "Bourgeois intellectuals," avoiding even naming him.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#75

Post by rbanffy »

fnord123 wrote: post #54
throwaway11236 wrote: post #41

> The same formula has been known to apply to those on the demotic right of the spectrum, too: the reader may have his or her own list of candidates for inclusion among the ranks of what could be called champagne populism. False equivalence, since rightwing populists don't advocate wealth redistribution and preach egalitarianism.

They do advocate wealth redistribution: redistributing it to the wealthy.

s/wealthy/deserving/g

In their view.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#76

Post by rbanffy »

janosett wrote: post #30
xrisk wrote: post #19

As usual, I am not surprised to see this thread devolve into name calling and strawmanish idealist arguments.

While I would love quality discussion about politically charged issues like this, it seems like we can't manage to stay respectful. I think it might just be natural to follow suit with the divisive conversations happening in other forums. What draws me to HN are the thoughtful, genuine discussions about topics around technology, science, and business. While not perfect, it often seems to dodge the political divisiven…

All things considered, it remained surprisingly respectful. Some islands of name calling, but, overall, pretty good discussion on the subject.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#77

Post by tim333 »

dluan wrote: post #70

The masthead of this site starts with: > Filling the Void Left by Modern Higher Education. Too many college students feel isolated or attacked for questioning progressive orthodoxy and the ever-narrowing range of debate on campus. Love to see anti intellectualism spread around HN, and again not surprised.

They seem fairly pro intellectual, just not lefty intellectual.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#78

Post by fvdessen »

pkos98 wrote: post #32

Currently reading his biography (he's the most famous person of my hometown :), good timing to see an article about him on HN! Since Engels always was "the second Violine" (behind Marx), he could get away with a hedonistic lifestyle without endangering the communistic movement too much. While many may describe him as a typical "Champagnersozialist", IMO in Manchester he realised that the right action of an individual…

Engels stole from his workers a special extra salary of 10 times the average just for his own entertainment purpose (self admittedly). He could have instead not stolen that money from his workers, live an extremely confortable life, and still finance Marx, just like Weinstein could have made pro feminist movies without raping women.

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#79

Post by boomboomsubban »

busterarm wrote: post #43
afiori wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from a culture that is comparatively pro-comunism, but my personal reaction to people promoting comunism is the same as when a religious person claims that their religion is based on love, understanding, and inclusion. In the case of religion (whether or not I believe it is positive or negative) I know that there are many many dark corners that the "it is all about love" person is not talking about. Same thing…

> Same thing with comunism, I have known in my life people I would be slightly afraid to see holding power flying that banner and we all know what happened many times in history, and while this can be said of many ideology in my opinion the comunism cluster looks like it is trying to sweep the dust under the rug. Having spent much of my early twenties embedded with some of today's more prominent socialist activists i…

>can tell you that behind closed doors the only subject that ever crossed their lips was "power".

So you talked to politicians?

Re: Engels: The Communist as Hedonist

#80

Post by CryptoPunk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #56
CryptoPunk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, private property, which is a capitalist institution, has existed since prehistoric times, probably from even since before Homo Sapiens arose. Proto-property-rights are also observed in the Animal Kingdom, with principles like "first possession", where the first animal to the kill is less likely to give up the kill, and the second animal more likely to give it up, often governing animal interactions. In fact, game…

> No, private property, which is a capitalist institution No, it hasn't. “Private property”, in the sense in which it is a defining institution of capitalism (ownership of the means of production by an individual as marketable property distinct from. ownership of or personal jurisdiction over land), requires the conceptual separation of individual property and public authority that is one of the characteristic featur…

>>No, it hasn't. “Private property”, in the sense in which it is a defining institution of capitalism (ownership of the means of production by an individual as marketable property distinct from. ownership of or personal jurisdiction over land)

Modern capitalism's private property is based on exactly the same principle of exclusive control over a mass of matter as pre-modern society's private property. It is a more sophisticated version of it, that incorporates the advances of modern civilization to its enforcement and utilization, but that is to be expected with any institution as it evolves with the times.

>>requires the conceptual separation of individual property and public authority that is one of the characteristic features of the transition from pre-capitalist (specifically feudal in most of the West) to capitalist property relations.

I don't know what this means. Can you elaborate?

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