Whoa! Calm down calm down. I was just politely mocking their palaver.

Btw, just had a shit. Played some Dirt3 and ragequit.

the communism that has gone badly in the past(or is going badly now) was/is capitalism. Wages are paid, surplus reinvested, producer is alienated from his own self-activity and the products of his labor, etc. etc. etc.

they fact that you're posing something like copyleft as an alternative to getting rid of capitalism says a lot about where you're coming from: Go out an ask a homeless person selling papers if patent law was the source of his troubles. The system needs finance capital just as much as it needs productive capital, they're two sides of the same coin, each enables the function of the other. It's not about violence, symbolic or otherwise, against middle-class dads... IDK try to find a good abridged version of Marx's Capital(or go for the unabridged, it'd be good summer reading) or something if you're really interested in learning about this perspective and the argument behind it. here's a pretty wordy article that i more or less agree with

TBH it's not really a discussion im very interested in pursuing much further here, if you'd like reading suggestions or whatever feel free to PMme

will do! just to clarify, i wasn't saying that copyleft in itself fixes capitalism at all (especially for homeless people) but yeah. i'll probably bug you for more things to read at some point.

actually speaking of reading, i did some architecture reading and most of it was either specific advice about the process of going through arch school or about the phenomenology of buildings, namedropping 12 Wittgensteins per sentence. some of it was vaguely interesting but very pretentious / occasionally verifiably false in its minor details. i got most of the books by going over my sister's 1st year arch reading list so maybe therein lies the problem.

I don’t think I’ve ever been condescending in characterization of the working class, especially not one along the lines you seem to be suggesting I am. I think that’s coming from you being presumptuous and intentionally being a prick by making vulgarizations of my views. Maybe you’re confused and don’t know much about where I’m coming from, but what I promote and the activity I’m involved in has nothing to do convincing people to drop everything and fall in line to the “learned man’s revolution” or “enlightening” anyone. I understand and appreciate nuance in class analysis, differences within the class and the potential for working people to be swept up in reactionary backwards movements. I do not see the working class in abstract terms but rather born out of concrete social relations that are historically specific to capitalism. Most importantly I said that I consider myself very much a part of it. I am convinced that the working class, because of its position in capitalist society, is the only force capable of doing away with it and its struggles have historically shaped the “political climate”. Am I really the one being condescending here by pointing out that things can change pretty rapidly?
I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to equate your project with a green roof or whatever and it wasn’t meant to minimize it(I happen to think that increasing the area of permeable surfaces is of critical importance, and a lot of the projects I'm familiar with and had in mind are pretty large multimillion dollar endeavors). I used it as an example to point out that localized remediation projects, no matter how neat and good they may be, fail to address the real problem(the root of it all). This comes back to my initial disagreement with you: Is sneaking 'subversive' things in under the noses of developers that hire good-hearted professionals really the best thing that can be done because the political climate will never be hospitable to radical social change? Great, do your thing, have a blast, it’s probably really swell. But I think you’re wrong, I think your premise is wrong. I disagree very much with that statement.

maybe you think something was implied that isn't, but I was just going by what you've posted. sounded a lot like knowing what's best for the silly little people, who remain pure and unspoilt in their quaint ignorance; who, if provided the proper stimulus, would rise up and support your planned revolution as desired. if I exaggerated or ran with it at all, it was only to show that some of the stuff you've been saying can come across as pretty gross without the necessary context. you haven't provided that context until now. apparently it's the 'working class' that is important, because they are the only ones capable of generating the force necessary to bring radical change. that's cool, I can't disagree with that. 'never' was an exaggeration, but I remain pessimistic something like that will happen soon enough to make a difference in the lives of the people who are living here now. I don't think I said anything about radical social change to begin with tho, that's something that surfaced later in the argument. my point was that a lot of your end-goals can be implemented with or without your revolution, with or without capitalism. this is not to say capitalism isn't something that should be eliminated. but even 'if' it still exists in this country, that doesn't mean the lives of the people, particularly the urban poor, can't be vastly improved in the meantime.

and one doesn't necessarily need to go under anyone's nose to implement anything

btw this isn't intended as a dig or anything but don't you think the title "working class" excludes some of the people who could use help the most and sort of implies some kind of randian labor fetishism? an outsider witnesses a debate between a communist and objectivist and wonders what this pervasive fascination with jobs and quantifiable labor is all about

edit: is it an attempt to distance the valuable hard-working innocents from the impoverished, homeless people, prostitutes, the disabled and unable to work etc

Those gift cards will be worthless after the revolution anyway don't sweat it

but that means if he used them now, before the revolution, he would have the glorious fruits of consumerism
the revolution is just one big universal gift card expiry date
get spending, chumps

you cannot buy the freedom from the machine

I will show you true freedoms

txt

Well, then it sounds like we've been talking past each other. But if you think that a lot or any of "my end goals"(whatever that means) can be implemented in the context of capitalism, then I don't think you really understand where I'm coming from.

btw this isn't intended as a dig or anything but don't you think the title "working class" excludes some of the people who could use help the most and sort of implies some kind of randian labor fetishism? an outsider witnesses a debate between a communist and objectivist and wonders what this pervasive fascination with jobs and quantifiable labor is all about

edit: is it an attempt to distance the valuable hard-working innocents from the impoverished, homeless people, prostitutes, the disabled and unable to work etc

The working class is not necessarily restricted to those immediately involved in the labor process. Marxian critique actually addresses the issue of the unemployed as "relative surplus population" and links it to the increasing productivity and accumulation of capital. The unemployed are not separate from the working class. What is primary is one's relationship to capital.
Folks like prostitutes(supposing they're not forced or working for a pimp) or career criminals tend to fall into the category of "lumpenproletariat" and their interests don't necessarily always align with those of the working class. Why do you keep insisting on attaching some sort of moralistic narrative("innocents", "noble", etc.)? There are no goodguys and badguys in any of this. 
I'm also not so sure what Ayn Rand/Objectivism has to do with any of this...

i wish you guys had made a topic for whatever it is you are talking about. this looks like a great opportunity for me to drop some of those grade-a defeatist one-liners i have found myself quietly mumbling to myself in bed as i cry myself to sleep

I always sort of thought of capitalism as sort of a bare bones/lacking a system in the first place. Like, lack of (government) regulation. so... wouldn't any system have to sort of work off of plain/nothing? Though I suppose that'd be working off of anarchy, but isn't that essentially what pure capitalism is? economic anarchy?

I'll admit to having no specialty in the field of economics so that sort of why much of this is in the form of a question. I am unsure. I'd like specification, but understand if there will be none.

EDIT: reason I bring this up is because you brought up marxist perspective rather than capitalistic perspective, and I thought since capitalistic perspective is effectively 'ground zero'/vanilla/blank sheet of paper that it seems confusing to look into it from another perspective.

(also this is my 2000th post woot)

capitalism came from somewhere. it was more or less enforced when it came into being(people were killed for not working).

i think you might want to look into the history of western europe

I liked the idea of an anarchist communism but anarchy seems like an impossible goal for any developed and non tribal sized society to reach. I read somewhere about a colony or some shit in etheopia that had a form of anarchy as their governing structure and it worked for them really well. Atleast I think it was etheopia.

the last 8 chapters(26-33) and sections 5-6 of chapter 10 of Marx's Das Kapital Vol. 1 go over a relatively brief history of what's known as "primitive accumulation" and the development of capitalist political economy as Europe transitioned from feudalism. I think you might find what I'm getting at there, and fortunately you can pick up at that part of the book without much trouble.

I don't really want to get too far into the stuff you're bringing up because it's a very long discussion. Look a little further than wikipedia or avoid it entirely when it comes to things like this because a lot of the things you've mentioned have long and contentious histories and it's maintained by internet people so you'll get a pretty distorted sense of the significance of things like anarcho-capitalism(it has never existed as a real significant movement in history the way a lot of collectivist/socialist anarchist movements have, yet you'd think it's a legitimate ideological current from looking at its wiki).

feeling better tho I only have 4 prescription acid-reducers left and I'm still not entirely without symptoms. probably gonna have to start hunting for a real doctor again

Well, then it sounds like we've been talking past each other. But if you think that a lot or any of "my end goals"(whatever that means) can be implemented in the context of capitalism, then I don't think you really understand where I'm coming from.

we shall see. though I am talking more about the human side

Folks like prostitutes(supposing they're not forced or working for a pimp) or career criminals tend to fall into the category of "lumpenproletariat" and their interests don't necessarily always align with those of the working class.

und sie sehen meinen lumpen und dies lumpige hotel! yeah, it's places like this where all the theory and reasoning gets pretty hideous and inhuman. not to mention these guys were working with an extremely dated understanding of human behavior and human life. thinking of humans solely in terms of their relationship to capital and whether or not they'll aid one's revolution is pretty gross to begin with anyway, but....

Why do you keep insisting on attaching some sort of moralistic narrative("innocents", "noble", etc.)? There are no goodguys and badguys in any of this. 
I'm also not so sure what Ayn Rand/Objectivism has to do with any of this...

the noble savage. how to explain?? mocking some sort of understood/implied purity and superiority of the 'working class'. it's everywhere, really. from your criticism of me "hating working class people" to the countless things marx and engels wrote about people and their classes to the horrible ways this shit was implemented in places like Russia. the lumpenproletariat, literally SHITTY LOW-CLASS PEOPLE (separate from the valuable low-class proto-revolutionaries). there are no good guys and bad guys? on which theoretical level I have yet to see???

as a reaction to communism, rand's objectivism is actually pretty similar to it despite trying to be its opposite. I was specifically speaking about the attention to work, labor, and productivity, as part of my qeuestion as to why WORK is so emphasized. I really can't see it as anything other than an attempt to elevate the faultless, productive "working people" from other low-class citizens and unfortunate people (who were no doubt taboo, undesirable and unmarketable even in this sort of primitive economy-based discussion of bettering human existence) and from the criminal bourgeoisie

fuck your fucking bullshit links I want more marx