My question was how me saying people are the problem has anything to do with liberal ideology? My statement about authoritarianism was to point out that what I said before was definitely not liberal.
What would be liberal would be to say it’s a good thing that people can fuck around and twist things to their benefit, as if that was the system working as intended. I’m not saying that. I’m saying systems aren’t working, and the problem is people.
If you keep framing the problem as caused by the system, then you’ll be blind to the people problem in whatever system you implement to replace it.
Yeah so first off, we need to acknowledge that people are social animals. We aren’t special creatures separate from our evolution. As social animals our outlook is determined by our direct relationships with other people and our place among our community and society at large. This directly informs not only our ability to live and survive and reproduce, but our kins ability to survive and also reproduce.
Here we see the rough outline of the beginning of larger society from the base unit. It’s an incredibly more complex topic than this but we must be brief. What’s interesting here is that we also see the beginnings of class once women start being traded. Again very complex and requires books, but let’s keep general trends in mind as we are supposed to when discussing macro concepts (as a side, that’s another point liberals tend to forget - the need to focus on overall trends, which is necessary for the discussion of massive economies and history over time). So now we have class within society which also directly informs our direct relationships and relationships abroad.
And this is a self sustaining mechanism (because we are social - that is to say we care about our relationships and thus shared interests because they benefit us individually or our kin) that changes very slowly over thousands of years due to many factors (reading a book is again required). We can use the European model of history and generalize that dominant classes tend to change hands every couple of thousands or hundreds of years. Because it is self sustaining (somewhat - civilizations can fluctuate, for example the collapse of the USSR*, or the existence of the southern American slave economy within a capitalist world), a dominant class can effectively shape its own society for a long period of time. There are obviously a billion conditions that can determine what state a society is in at any given time, but again, we are concerned with the model here, or in other words the general trend.
So in this we start to see how people actually behave through the unification of biology and human history. It’s extremely rough and in the works but strong enough that we can reject any suggestions about human behavior that fall short of the standard. What this means about “bad people fucking around” is that this is a view of people in a very narrow view of history. As class changes how people act (again, generally) accordingly to their relationships, in a dictatorship of the proletariat you expect over time the likelihood of bad actors (1) appearing to decrease and (2) the likelihood of succeeding at whatever they do to decrease as well.
*For a quick look at the fall of the Soviet Union (a sample size of 1, but important nonetheless) I recommend a video by either Hakim or Paul Cockshott.
This post was paid for by Xi bucks. Yes my social credit score is through the roof. Comrades may reproduce this post for free without referencing the writer.
Not going to answer subsequent questions. They can be answered by further inquiry to proper sources.
Whether you are liberal has little to do with how you see yourself or with what you profess to be. I am a Marxist but if I say something liberal, I either need to correct it or I will become a liberal. I must rely on others’ criticism and my own self criticism to spot liberalism, and to correct my ways.
If I repeatedly did and said liberal things, it wouldn’t matter if I still called myself a Marxist because that would rest on an idealist version of myself – and preferring the ideal over the material is theoretically liberal, not Marxist. I would be liberal, not Marxist in praxis (liberal thought and liberal action), regardless of what I wanted to be or thought I was.
Marxists are dialectical materialists. Which is a theory of change or of becoming. There is no ‘stasis’ or things, only processes, relations, and various levels of abstraction: nothing stands still. I am an individual, a worker, a prole, a human. I am always in a state of becoming. Either becoming a Marxist or becoming a liberal or, god forbid, becoming a fascist. The latter isn’t very likely but it would happen if I were to start doing and saying fascist things even if I didn’t like to be called it.
According to Bertell Ollman in Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (2003, pp. 88–91) when Marx does ‘abstraction’, he moves between seven levels of generality:
The individual person, you or me as unique,
People in general, as they act and behave in the last 20–50 years,
Capitalism as a political economic system,
Class society,
Human society,
The animal world,
Material nature.
Marx/ists use/s all seven, but mainly the first five. Others flit between all seven, but inconsistently and incompletely.
The liberal/bourgeois framework works primarily on two levels. The first, the abstract, unique individual. And the fifth, the abstract human society. Hence liberals talk about people or humanity as a whole. Rarely, if ever, will liberals – or, to be trite people looking through a lens of liberal ideology – abstract to another level of generality.
So when you abstract to the level of individual people or to the level where ‘human nature’ appears coherent, when you refuse to abstract to the other levels of generality, you are, whether consciously or subconsciously, being liberal.
Notice how Giyuu traced through the history of human society to explain that class society arose at a certain point, and that humans in different class societies display a different kind of ‘nature’ than those in other class societies or in pre-class society. Giyuu concluded that under socialism, human relations will develop until the motivation e.g. for what we might call greed and corruption will dissolve. ‘Human nature’ will again look different to what it looks like under capitalism/class society.
It is not possible – at least, it will be very difficult – to see or accept what Giyuu describes without opening up to the idea of different levels of generality, beyond the individual or the human society. To reject or dismiss the other levels of abstraction, to insist on using only two, is almost if not by definition, to be liberal.
Edit: rejecting somebody’s argument for ‘framing the problem as caused by the system’ is the type of dismissal/rejection that I’m taking about in the last paragraph.
Thank you for your in depth reply, while I don’t fully agree with everything I do appreciate the insight. Also tying in @Giyuu’s comment, which seemed to be a summary of a longer argument but missing important detail.
I don’t agree with your definition of liberal. Stealing a definition off the internet, I think the most appropriate one in this context is:
a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
Loosely applying those 7 stages, I’d say it covers 1) The individual, 3) Capitalism, and 5) Human society. So I agree that the definition primarily covers 2 levels of generality (1 and 5).
However, to say that “a liberal only abstracts to these levels of generality” is nonsense. It’s like you’re taking a stencil of the definition, then saying anything that fits inside the stencil meets the definition, even if it looks nothing like the definition.
I wrote a short, simple statement:
The same is true of many implementations of communism. The problem isn’t the system, the problem is people, and people try to corrupt the system to their benefit.
You’ve assumed that because I only mentioned “the system” and “people” that I am talking in stages 1 and 5 (I would argue it’s more 1 and 3). By applying your stencil that means I’m liberal (or what I’m saying is, and because I said it I am). However, to expand it and flavour it with your stages, I could say:
In any group of people working together, there will always be the potential of an individual intentionally corrupting things for their benefit.
The point of what I’m saying is that there will always be the potential of an individual (1) stepping out of line and screwing things. That could cover a political system (3), inter- or intra-class relationships (4), or social status (5); an individual can poison any or all of them. You may argue that a different political system could reduce the likelihood of individuals stepping out, with greed and corruption dissolved, but they will never truly be gone as people as individuals will always have that capacity.
Furthermore when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal - “individual rights” being the first tenant, when I’m saying the individual is the issue. I did stop short of saying individual rights aren’t important, however I’m clearly pointing towards the need for limits on those rights. So I firmly reject labelling my initial statement as liberal - it might fit the stencil, but it doesn’t fit the actual definition.
Thanks for responding. You’ve made some good points. Let’s keep this conversation going as I’m enjoying it and I appreciate good faith challenges. Before I address the other points, I’ll recommend Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology if you want some of the detail that will flesh out Giyuu’s comment.
To clarify, I wasn’t defining liberalism. I was describing some characteristics of liberal/bourgeois world outlooks: the tendency to treat the individual as the most important unit. This tendency is dialectically related to the features of liberalism that you identify in the quote.
And it’s a tendency not a universal law. To a Marxist, everything is contradiction; which leaves open the possibility that liberals will contradictorily elevate the individual and e.g. capitalism or human nature, etc, at the same time.
There are many types of liberalism: classical liberalism, neoliberalism, ordoliberalism, so we can only speak in general terms when talking about liberalism in general. Still, I agree that ‘individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise’ are common to different liberalisms.
Sometimes liberal thought abstracts to the level of humanity. This is often faulty as liberals tend to ascribe current features of human relations to ‘human nature’ in general. In reality, those features are bespoke to the political economy, which is either class society or capitalism.
Liberalism prefers to universalise; whereas Marxists insist that processes and relations are historically contingent i.e., for example, people act in a certain way because their society is set up in a certain way.
I agree that
say[ing] that “a liberal only abstracts to these levels of generality” is nonsense.
Although I may get close to saying this kind of thing in the heat of an argument, I didn’t say it in this thread. You should only use quotation marks in this way for direct quotes. I said (emphasis added):
Others flit between all seven, but inconsistently and incompletely. … The liberal/bourgeois framework works primarily on two levels. … [R]efus[ing] to abstract to the other levels of generality, [is], whether consciously or subconsciously, … liberal.
Let me address your definition of liberalism and application of the seven levels of generality. All four features, ‘individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise’ can be viewed from multiple levels of generality. I assume you say that the definition involves the third level of generality, capitalism, because it mentions ‘free enterprise’? That’s not necessarily the case.
Liberals often frame ‘free enterprise’ solely as a relation between individuals. It’s a mainstay of legal argument in that persons entering into contracts are deemed to have equal bargaining power. So if they didn’t like the terms, they shouldn’t have entered into the contract. It tends not to be for the courts to strike a fair bargain retroactively. As Pashukanis argues, the legal subject is the commodity owner ‘abstracted to the heavens’. It takes conscious effort to look at free enterprise other than through the lens of individualism. I am glad to see you do that; it suggests you are willing to move away from the liberal perspective.
Even if you reject that you are looking through a liberal lens, and indicate that you are willing to move past it, the rest of your comment makes several liberal assumptions. I’ll stick with the levels of generality idea to address the issue. You said:
The same is true of many implementations of communism. The problem isn’t the system, the problem is people, and people try to corrupt the system to their benefit.
You’ve [i.e. me, redtea] assumed that because I only mentioned “the system” and “people” that I am talking in stages 1 and 5 (I would argue it’s more 1 and 3)
I haven’t assumed anything, here. I’ve analysed. When you say ‘system’, you are talking about capitalism (level 3) (what you said would not make sense to me otherwise). I’m suggesting that your comment is speaking from the position of liberalism because you are emphasising the individual over the capitalist mode of production (the ’system’) or over the logic of class society. You next said, reiterating my point:
I could say:
In any group of people working together, there will always be the potential of an individual intentionally corrupting things for their benefit.
Again, this emphasises the individual (this could be an example. I’m unsure if this is what you would say). A Marxist (illiberal by definition) would say that while an individual has some power to make individual decisions, only certain options are logically available. Those options are determined by the political economy i.e. class-based capitalism.
We’re not really talking about people working together. Capitalism already entails a socialised mode of production (i.e. a division of labour, which entails a certain level of cooperation). (Again, it takes a liberal perspective to emphasise ’individuals’ working together in a socialised mode of production.) The reason that individuals working within the socialised mode of production of capitalism can game the system to their benefit is because this is hard-wired into the rules of the game.
You also said:
The point of what I’m saying is that there will always be the potential of an individual (1) stepping out of line and screwing things.
No substantive argument from me about that. The question is—does your analysis pre-suppose that the individual has primacy or does it pre-suppose the primacy of the class-based political economy of capitalism? Liberals emphasise the individual. Marxists accept that the individual has a role but insist that this is subservient and dialectically related to the rules of the ‘system’ (capitalism or class society, depending on the argument).
If liberals move away from the individual, it tends not to be to look at the level of the system or of class society but to ‘human nature’. This can be applied to your statements about ‘people’ because, at first, it implied that people in all times and places will act in the same way, according to human nature:
I’m saying systems aren’t working, and the problem is people.
You later appeared to move away from this claim:
You may argue that a different political system could reduce the likelihood of individuals stepping out, with greed and corruption dissolved, but they will never truly be gone as people as individuals will always have that capacity.
I’m unsure if you’re summarising what I said or whether you agree. If you agree, it contradicts you:
saying the individual is the issue.
This is only the case when generalising at the level of the individual or of human nature. ‘Bad’ behaviour, e.g. corruption, is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged within capitalism. So too is acting within and according to one’s class interests (favouring some interests over others, or: corruption) even if one consequence is personal enrichment.
The most straightforward way to settle this is to answer a question in the positive rather than the negative: if you’re not a liberal, what are you? I’m a Marxist.
I’m happy to address your final point, ‘when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal’, but I’m not wholly sure what you mean, and I don’t want to misrepresent your view.
From what you’ve said, I think you might be quite amenable to Marxism/communism. The German Ideology, cited above, will answer some questions but it’s not the easiest text to begin with. For that, I would suggest, in this instance, The three sources and three component parts of Marxism.
My question was how me saying people are the problem has anything to do with liberal ideology? My statement about authoritarianism was to point out that what I said before was definitely not liberal.
What would be liberal would be to say it’s a good thing that people can fuck around and twist things to their benefit, as if that was the system working as intended. I’m not saying that. I’m saying systems aren’t working, and the problem is people.
If you keep framing the problem as caused by the system, then you’ll be blind to the people problem in whatever system you implement to replace it.
Yeah so first off, we need to acknowledge that people are social animals. We aren’t special creatures separate from our evolution. As social animals our outlook is determined by our direct relationships with other people and our place among our community and society at large. This directly informs not only our ability to live and survive and reproduce, but our kins ability to survive and also reproduce.
Here we see the rough outline of the beginning of larger society from the base unit. It’s an incredibly more complex topic than this but we must be brief. What’s interesting here is that we also see the beginnings of class once women start being traded. Again very complex and requires books, but let’s keep general trends in mind as we are supposed to when discussing macro concepts (as a side, that’s another point liberals tend to forget - the need to focus on overall trends, which is necessary for the discussion of massive economies and history over time). So now we have class within society which also directly informs our direct relationships and relationships abroad.
And this is a self sustaining mechanism (because we are social - that is to say we care about our relationships and thus shared interests because they benefit us individually or our kin) that changes very slowly over thousands of years due to many factors (reading a book is again required). We can use the European model of history and generalize that dominant classes tend to change hands every couple of thousands or hundreds of years. Because it is self sustaining (somewhat - civilizations can fluctuate, for example the collapse of the USSR*, or the existence of the southern American slave economy within a capitalist world), a dominant class can effectively shape its own society for a long period of time. There are obviously a billion conditions that can determine what state a society is in at any given time, but again, we are concerned with the model here, or in other words the general trend.
So in this we start to see how people actually behave through the unification of biology and human history. It’s extremely rough and in the works but strong enough that we can reject any suggestions about human behavior that fall short of the standard. What this means about “bad people fucking around” is that this is a view of people in a very narrow view of history. As class changes how people act (again, generally) accordingly to their relationships, in a dictatorship of the proletariat you expect over time the likelihood of bad actors (1) appearing to decrease and (2) the likelihood of succeeding at whatever they do to decrease as well.
*For a quick look at the fall of the Soviet Union (a sample size of 1, but important nonetheless) I recommend a video by either Hakim or Paul Cockshott.
This post was paid for by Xi bucks. Yes my social credit score is through the roof. Comrades may reproduce this post for free without referencing the writer.
Not going to answer subsequent questions. They can be answered by further inquiry to proper sources.
Whether you are liberal has little to do with how you see yourself or with what you profess to be. I am a Marxist but if I say something liberal, I either need to correct it or I will become a liberal. I must rely on others’ criticism and my own self criticism to spot liberalism, and to correct my ways.
If I repeatedly did and said liberal things, it wouldn’t matter if I still called myself a Marxist because that would rest on an idealist version of myself – and preferring the ideal over the material is theoretically liberal, not Marxist. I would be liberal, not Marxist in praxis (liberal thought and liberal action), regardless of what I wanted to be or thought I was.
Marxists are dialectical materialists. Which is a theory of change or of becoming. There is no ‘stasis’ or things, only processes, relations, and various levels of abstraction: nothing stands still. I am an individual, a worker, a prole, a human. I am always in a state of becoming. Either becoming a Marxist or becoming a liberal or, god forbid, becoming a fascist. The latter isn’t very likely but it would happen if I were to start doing and saying fascist things even if I didn’t like to be called it.
According to Bertell Ollman in Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (2003, pp. 88–91) when Marx does ‘abstraction’, he moves between seven levels of generality:
Marx/ists use/s all seven, but mainly the first five. Others flit between all seven, but inconsistently and incompletely.
The liberal/bourgeois framework works primarily on two levels. The first, the abstract, unique individual. And the fifth, the abstract human society. Hence liberals talk about people or humanity as a whole. Rarely, if ever, will liberals – or, to be trite people looking through a lens of liberal ideology – abstract to another level of generality.
So when you abstract to the level of individual people or to the level where ‘human nature’ appears coherent, when you refuse to abstract to the other levels of generality, you are, whether consciously or subconsciously, being liberal.
Notice how Giyuu traced through the history of human society to explain that class society arose at a certain point, and that humans in different class societies display a different kind of ‘nature’ than those in other class societies or in pre-class society. Giyuu concluded that under socialism, human relations will develop until the motivation e.g. for what we might call greed and corruption will dissolve. ‘Human nature’ will again look different to what it looks like under capitalism/class society.
It is not possible – at least, it will be very difficult – to see or accept what Giyuu describes without opening up to the idea of different levels of generality, beyond the individual or the human society. To reject or dismiss the other levels of abstraction, to insist on using only two, is almost if not by definition, to be liberal.
Edit: rejecting somebody’s argument for ‘framing the problem as caused by the system’ is the type of dismissal/rejection that I’m taking about in the last paragraph.
Thank you for your in depth reply, while I don’t fully agree with everything I do appreciate the insight. Also tying in @Giyuu’s comment, which seemed to be a summary of a longer argument but missing important detail.
I don’t agree with your definition of liberal. Stealing a definition off the internet, I think the most appropriate one in this context is:
Loosely applying those 7 stages, I’d say it covers 1) The individual, 3) Capitalism, and 5) Human society. So I agree that the definition primarily covers 2 levels of generality (1 and 5).
However, to say that “a liberal only abstracts to these levels of generality” is nonsense. It’s like you’re taking a stencil of the definition, then saying anything that fits inside the stencil meets the definition, even if it looks nothing like the definition.
I wrote a short, simple statement:
You’ve assumed that because I only mentioned “the system” and “people” that I am talking in stages 1 and 5 (I would argue it’s more 1 and 3). By applying your stencil that means I’m liberal (or what I’m saying is, and because I said it I am). However, to expand it and flavour it with your stages, I could say:
The point of what I’m saying is that there will always be the potential of an individual (1) stepping out of line and screwing things. That could cover a political system (3), inter- or intra-class relationships (4), or social status (5); an individual can poison any or all of them. You may argue that a different political system could reduce the likelihood of individuals stepping out, with greed and corruption dissolved, but they will never truly be gone as people as individuals will always have that capacity.
Furthermore when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal - “individual rights” being the first tenant, when I’m saying the individual is the issue. I did stop short of saying individual rights aren’t important, however I’m clearly pointing towards the need for limits on those rights. So I firmly reject labelling my initial statement as liberal - it might fit the stencil, but it doesn’t fit the actual definition.
Thanks for responding. You’ve made some good points. Let’s keep this conversation going as I’m enjoying it and I appreciate good faith challenges. Before I address the other points, I’ll recommend Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology if you want some of the detail that will flesh out Giyuu’s comment.
To clarify, I wasn’t defining liberalism. I was describing some characteristics of liberal/bourgeois world outlooks: the tendency to treat the individual as the most important unit. This tendency is dialectically related to the features of liberalism that you identify in the quote.
And it’s a tendency not a universal law. To a Marxist, everything is contradiction; which leaves open the possibility that liberals will contradictorily elevate the individual and e.g. capitalism or human nature, etc, at the same time.
There are many types of liberalism: classical liberalism, neoliberalism, ordoliberalism, so we can only speak in general terms when talking about liberalism in general. Still, I agree that ‘individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise’ are common to different liberalisms.
Sometimes liberal thought abstracts to the level of humanity. This is often faulty as liberals tend to ascribe current features of human relations to ‘human nature’ in general. In reality, those features are bespoke to the political economy, which is either class society or capitalism.
Liberalism prefers to universalise; whereas Marxists insist that processes and relations are historically contingent i.e., for example, people act in a certain way because their society is set up in a certain way.
I agree that
Although I may get close to saying this kind of thing in the heat of an argument, I didn’t say it in this thread. You should only use quotation marks in this way for direct quotes. I said (emphasis added):
Let me address your definition of liberalism and application of the seven levels of generality. All four features, ‘individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise’ can be viewed from multiple levels of generality. I assume you say that the definition involves the third level of generality, capitalism, because it mentions ‘free enterprise’? That’s not necessarily the case.
Liberals often frame ‘free enterprise’ solely as a relation between individuals. It’s a mainstay of legal argument in that persons entering into contracts are deemed to have equal bargaining power. So if they didn’t like the terms, they shouldn’t have entered into the contract. It tends not to be for the courts to strike a fair bargain retroactively. As Pashukanis argues, the legal subject is the commodity owner ‘abstracted to the heavens’. It takes conscious effort to look at free enterprise other than through the lens of individualism. I am glad to see you do that; it suggests you are willing to move away from the liberal perspective.
Even if you reject that you are looking through a liberal lens, and indicate that you are willing to move past it, the rest of your comment makes several liberal assumptions. I’ll stick with the levels of generality idea to address the issue. You said:
I haven’t assumed anything, here. I’ve analysed. When you say ‘system’, you are talking about capitalism (level 3) (what you said would not make sense to me otherwise). I’m suggesting that your comment is speaking from the position of liberalism because you are emphasising the individual over the capitalist mode of production (the ’system’) or over the logic of class society. You next said, reiterating my point:
Again, this emphasises the individual (this could be an example. I’m unsure if this is what you would say). A Marxist (illiberal by definition) would say that while an individual has some power to make individual decisions, only certain options are logically available. Those options are determined by the political economy i.e. class-based capitalism.
We’re not really talking about people working together. Capitalism already entails a socialised mode of production (i.e. a division of labour, which entails a certain level of cooperation). (Again, it takes a liberal perspective to emphasise ’individuals’ working together in a socialised mode of production.) The reason that individuals working within the socialised mode of production of capitalism can game the system to their benefit is because this is hard-wired into the rules of the game.
You also said:
No substantive argument from me about that. The question is—does your analysis pre-suppose that the individual has primacy or does it pre-suppose the primacy of the class-based political economy of capitalism? Liberals emphasise the individual. Marxists accept that the individual has a role but insist that this is subservient and dialectically related to the rules of the ‘system’ (capitalism or class society, depending on the argument).
If liberals move away from the individual, it tends not to be to look at the level of the system or of class society but to ‘human nature’. This can be applied to your statements about ‘people’ because, at first, it implied that people in all times and places will act in the same way, according to human nature:
You later appeared to move away from this claim:
I’m unsure if you’re summarising what I said or whether you agree. If you agree, it contradicts you:
This is only the case when generalising at the level of the individual or of human nature. ‘Bad’ behaviour, e.g. corruption, is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged within capitalism. So too is acting within and according to one’s class interests (favouring some interests over others, or: corruption) even if one consequence is personal enrichment.
The most straightforward way to settle this is to answer a question in the positive rather than the negative: if you’re not a liberal, what are you? I’m a Marxist.
I’m happy to address your final point, ‘when you look at this statement it all but contradicts the definition of liberal’, but I’m not wholly sure what you mean, and I don’t want to misrepresent your view.
From what you’ve said, I think you might be quite amenable to Marxism/communism. The German Ideology, cited above, will answer some questions but it’s not the easiest text to begin with. For that, I would suggest, in this instance, The three sources and three component parts of Marxism.