| Theory |
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Neo-Puritanism March 3, 2006 by RedStar2000 |
The "visions" of communism vary quite a bit. What some envision as the "realm of freedom" is seen by others as the "realm of virtue"...that is, a society in which people can be successfully compelled to behave in certain ways considered "virtuous".
All previous forms of class society, even fascism, have been unable to "abolish vice"...regardless of the horrendous penalties imposed.
But some "communists" think that "it can be done"...and look forward to the opportunity to do it!
As you will see, I am vehemently opposed to this whole outlook.
I think it's fundamentally anti-communist!
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Has anyone besides myself noticed the recent explosion of neo-puritanism on this board?
Suddenly it's 1915 at RevLeft!
All sorts of people are "busting out" with views that I thought revolutionaries had left behind "in the west" many decades ago.
We've got people pissing and moaning about wide-spread "sexual degeneracy". We've got people who not only support the "war on drugs" but who also want to extend it to alcohol and tobacco.
In 1915, this sort of shit was openly religious in inspiration. It was a "war on sin".
Now the motives for all this crap are "nominally secular". We have to "protect people's health" and keep them from being "weakened" by sexual or chemical pleasure...then they'll presumably "concentrate on revolution".
True, some of those "arguments" were also used in 1915...back then, for example, medical authorities assured the public that "the sin of Onan" (masturbation) led to insanity.
Religion having lost most of its intellectual respectability, we now face a flood of "scientific" evidence that all forms of sensual pleasure are incredibly dangerous and will kill us all unless, of course, we "repent and sin no more".
And the "political spin" is that we "can't" fight for revolution and still "have a good time"...we must become "revolutionary monks & nuns".
This is such a bizarre line of argument that one can only be amazed at its monumental effrontery.
And its elitist implications...that only the "virtuous few" are "fit" for revolution. The vast majority of "sinners" must be "taken in hand" and made to behave properly "for their own good".
The capitalist class has always had "mixed feelings" about the pleasures of the working class. They liked making money from them but they were displeased by the prospects of pleasure interfering with productive labor.
So the "signals" in capitalist society are "mixed"...we have "legal drugs" and "illegal drugs"; "permitted sex" and "prohibited sex". And the signals change from time to time.
Over the last half century, the signals have changed in a somewhat more "permissive" direction in the "west".
But in the U.S., that trend is being reversed under the ideological influence of Christian fascism...as well as sociological "research" designed to "prove" that "promiscuity is bad for you".
As are tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, meth, and ecstasy...all "bad juju". *laughs*
It would appear that the American ruling class is "switching over" to a "model" for the working class that emphasizes "de-personalized" pleasure. Porn instead of sex. Watching people use drugs instead of actually enjoying drugs...and feeling "morally superior" while doing so.
One would predict that there will be "food porn"...movies of people eating elaborate "unhealthy" meals which we can watch while chewing on our rabbitarian munchies and feeling smugly superior to those gustatory "degenerates". *laughs*
What's most difficult for me to understand is why people who think of themselves as revolutionaries would allow themselves to get sucked into this crap.
Do they "just believe" all the witch-doctorery about "harmful pleasures"? Have they picked up somewhere the idea that sensual pleasures are "counter-revolutionary"? Do some of them just look forward to the idea of deciding what is to be permitted and what is to be prohibited for the masses?
As I've mentioned before, this is really a Platonic idea. The purpose of "good government" is to "make people virtuous".
Properly speaking, Plato was the philosophical "father of fascism"...and it was 20th century fascism in all its varieties that most strenuously attempted to make people "live virtuous lives" whether they wanted to or not.
"Degenerate behavior" was actually a crime in the Third Reich.
It seems to me necessary for communist revolutionaries to reject this whole outlook on human behavior. The human quest for pleasure is neither "morally reprehensible" or "physically deadly". There are some risks involved...but living itself is inherently "risky" and we'll all die from something.
Our approach should be to search for cures for illnesses that may be a consequence of indulgence in particular pleasures...and not seek to demonize those pleasures in a vain effort to "save people from themselves".
I know that there are more than a few people on this board who will find this "scandalous"...but communism will be fun!
Far more pleasurable than the empty promises of capitalism.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 17, 2006
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quote (Sundiata Acoli):
Lumpen tendencies are associated with lack of discipline, liberal use of alcohol, marijuana, and curse words, loose sexual morals, a criminal mentality, and rash actions.
http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/bla2.html
Sounds like they should have recruited more Mormons, eh? *laughs*
It seems to me likely that only a small part of the "Lumpenproletariat" -- if such a thing can be said to exist at all -- would provide any serious problems in the course of building for a proletarian revolution or in the tasks to be completed afterwards.
The "hustler mentality" is one response to capitalist exploitation...but it's not terribly wide-spread.
Indeed, it's the form that bourgeois ideology takes towards the very bottom of the social pyramid. Most very poor people neither like nor respect the hustlers and avoid them entirely whenever possible.
Mr. Acoli emphasizes "lack of discipline" from the same motives that both the Leninists and the bourgeoisie bitterly lament such failings.
Goddam people won't do what they're told!
It's a safe prediction that they'll all have even more to whine about in the coming decades.
As to the consumption of alcohol and marijuana, the use of "curse words", and -- horror of horrors -- "loose sexual morals", it's clear that Mr. Acoli is completely unacquainted with the vast majority of the population in modern capitalist societies.
Indeed, he'd be scandalized by the opinions expressed on this board. *laughs*
His views are really a distant echo of Lenin's.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 17, 2006
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quote:
Drug use, drinking yourself into a stupor and promiscuous sex, this is the Redstar vision for a "21st century socialism" is it?
Beats the crap out of neo-puritanical abstentionism...at least that seems to be the wide-spread and growing popular preference.
There's long been a rather reactionary thread in "left politics" which promotes the idea of "self-denial" as a "sign" of left "moral supremacy".
As if sensual pleasures are a mark of "moral degeneracy" that a righteous proletariat will disdain.
I expect people in a communist society will embrace sensual pleasures according to individual taste with enthusiasm...free of all of the guilt and self-reproach produced by thousands of years of reactionary superstition.
quote:
I've always thought that one the main goals of the movement was to engender in people a sense of self-respect and pride, as well as having an emotional connection with their fellow human beings.
The self-respect and pride come from standing up and resisting the despotism of capital...not from monkish vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
That Leninists would be confused by these alternatives is hardly surprising.
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Consumer capitalism wants us to to simply piss our lives away.
What capitalism really "wants" us to do is produce commodities of greater exchange value than the wages they pay us.
They want us to work our lives away!
The age of retirement should be raised to 85 by 2050 because of trends in life expectancy, a US biologist has said.
And while consumption is certainly strongly encouraged, how much of that consumption is actually pleasurable?
Is it really a "big thrill" to have a cell phone that plays 10,000 stupid songs? A 50" dummyvision screen with 600 channels of lies and bullshit? An SUV the size of a small tank in which to spend your fun-filled morning and evening commutes?
The "pleasures" promised by capitalist consumption are mostly empty! The mammoth "entertainment" industry exists to alleviate one of the most fundamental characteristics of working class life under capitalism: BOREDOM!
It's enjoyed a "long run" of success, no question about it. But how far can they go with the proposition that "fun" is nothing but watching other people have fictional fun?
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Anyway, I'm sure any of the 40 million HIV positive Africans will agree, sexual "morals" are pointless.
As I understand it, HIV is a mutation of a similar virus that infects (harmlessly) chimpanzees...and was acquired by Africans from killing and eating "bush meat" -- chimps.
Your implication is that the virus would not have spread among humans (in Africa or anyplace else) had people been life-long monogamists like the Bible says we should...and carefully avoided ever needing a blood transfusion, of course.
Not very likely, eh?
The fact is that any sexually-transmitted disease will inevitably become epidemic among humans; puritanical sexual mores will, at best, slow down the process somewhat. Whenever humans have even the slimmest chance of novelty in sexual partners, they seize it with enthusiasm!
It's the way we are.
The Africans had the bad luck to be first exposed to HIV; if there's anyplace on Earth where it doesn't exist now, it will.
At the present time, it's clearly in the interests of the pharmaceutical giants to "control" HIV with an expensive "cocktail" of drugs. At some point, a "rogue" pharmaceutical outfit will come up with both a cure and an effective vaccine...and enjoy profits that even an oil corporation executive might envy.
And when that happens, folks like yourself will have nothing to fall back on again except the Bible...or, given your own political affiliation, perhaps the Qu'ran. *laughs*
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Modern sociologists, leftist or not, agree that the lumpen is a fraction which exists on a margin of society, outside the wage system.
It's a thorny problem.
Every capitalist country has an "underground economy". People in it do work for wages, from time to time as the opportunity arises. But it's all "off the books"...these wages are never reported (or taxed!).
A few years ago when I had to move because the building I had been living in was sold, I paid a couple of guys with a truck $200 in cash to move my stuff to a new apartment. Knowing them a little, I sort of expect that they went out and bought some cocaine with the money. *laughs*
Are they "workers" or "lumpen"?
I once knew a woman who was a third-generation welfare recipient and who had never had a "formal job" in her life. But she used to baby-sit for some of her neighbors who did have jobs and make "off the books" cash...because it's almost impossible to live "just on welfare" in the U.S. The benefits are too low.
"Worker" or "lumpen"?
How about sex workers? Are they "workers" or "lumpen"?
Not long ago, I read a report focusing on young drug dealers in a Chicago slum. A surprising number of these kids still lived with their parent or parents and often had shit jobs at McDonald's or places like that. Their "drug dealing" was a second job that hardly paid them any more than a regular shit job...it was just less hard work.
"Workers" or "lumpen"?
I'm skeptical, as you may have gathered, of the usefulness of a concept like "lumpenproletariat".
Professional criminals are either petty-bourgeois or, if spectacularly successful, just plain bourgeois.
The occasional petty thief may also work at McDonald's...or work "off the books". It's all a matter of what opportunities to survive come along.
I don't expect most of these people to ever become conscious in a revolutionary sense...they live in a "culture of survival" that rarely permits time for reflection on "bigger issues".
But I don't see them as a "reactionary sub-class" either...though some of them might "hire themselves out" to the bourgeoisie depending on circumstances.
After all, some people of indisputably working-class origins become cops...certainly as reprehensible an act of class treason as anything a lumpenproletariat might do.
quote:
For example, the lumpens of interwar Europe were quite easily converted into the robotic thugs of various fascist corps organisations by the fascist leaderships.
Most of the thugs to which you refer were ex-soldiers for whom no jobs existed. Bourgeois sociologists said that they "failed to adjust to civilian life".
They just didn't feel comfortable outside of a military or quasi-military environment.
On the other hand, the KPD did have something of an alliance with some adolescent gangs in Berlin. When it came to kicking Nazi ass, there was "room for agreement". *laughs*
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I think this is due to the fact that the lumpenproletariat - in contrast to the working class, the bourgeoisie and the petit-bourgeoisie - has no dynamic within it, largely due to its exclusion from the production process.
Well, they have very narrow "horizons" -- getting the rent money together or getting the electricity turned back on or qualifying for some welfare benefit...these are the "big issues" in their lives. A fair percentage probably suffer from psychological problems and, of course, the schools they attended were shit.
So you really can't expect much.
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A disciplined class has an interest in the future of society. It dedicates much time and effort to further its interests in society.
That's a little too metaphysical for my taste. Interest in the future of society? Well, yeah. Dedicating time and effort to further its interests? Sure.
But what does "discipline" in the abstract have to do with this?
In practice, what does "discipline" boil down to other than Shut Up and Do What You're Told!?
How can anything good (revolutionary) come from that?
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First posted at RevLeft on February 18, 2006
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quote:
Why is it your assumption that "promiscuity" must be positive?
It's not a matter of numbers. It's the fact that people should be free to choose their partners based on mutual attraction, not what would "Jesus" think?.
Much less, what would the Party think. *laughs*
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Let's be clear, I think it's positive that people are sceptical of Christian values, it doesn't mean that I think all Christian values are necessarily "wrong".
Of course you don't. As a good Leninist, you value obedience to authority as highly as any serious Christian.
Many ex-Leninists have noted with despair the quasi-religious atmosphere that surrounds Leninist parties...although it would be helpful if they'd speak of it more often and in public.
How disappointing it is to discover that what one thought was a "gateway" to liberation turns out to be a church.
Moreover, one which does attempt to enforce "poverty, chastity, and obedience" with varying degrees of rigor. That is, some are fairly relaxed while others really go after people's personal pleasures with the torches and pitchforks.
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Who does degeneracy and alcoholism and drug abuse benefit?
Degeneracy? *laughs*
Actually, it's a "null question" -- there's no real systematic evidence of benefit or harm.
Most drinkers never become alcoholics. Most drug addicts who manage to avoid the attentions of the police function ok. Most sexual "degenerates" (*laughs*) either never acquire a sexually transmitted disease or they acquire one that's easily curable.
Some Leninists argue that such "self-indulgence" diverts time and energy away from the Party's activities. That might be true.
So what?
Why should it matter to me or most people if a "revolutionary monk" breaks his vows? Indeed, why would I or any sensible person want to live in a society run by a sect of "revolutionary monks" anyway?
They'd be just as intolerably oppressive as the fucking Christians or the fucking mullahs!
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Where did I, or anybody, suggest "chastity", or "poverty".
Leninists don't necessarily put it in plain words -- that not being one of their strengths anyway.
But the inference is there. To enjoy sex with multiple partners is "lumpen" and "degenerate". A "good comrade" gives all of his surplus funds to the Party...and the more minimal his basic needs are, the more he can give to the Party. Spending money on cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, etc. is "bourgeois self-indulgence" and wasting money that should be given to the Party.
And so it goes.
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"Oh well, the Catholic church calls for abstinence, so that means everyone should fuck anything that moves and nevermind the consequences.
Only if someone wants to fuck "everything that moves" and "everything that moves" is willing.
The only communist criterion is mutual consent.
All the rest is superstitious bullshit -- theological or secular.
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The 'consumer' lifestyle has replaced religion as the 'soul of the soulless world' in much of the secular West. Included in this lifestyle is a 'rejection' of religious morals. Good? Yes, but to be replaced by what? An atomised life where fellow human beings become, as I said earlier, merely "vessels" for your own gratification. Where you numb the pain not with prayer, but by getting blinding drunk and having sex with a stranger you'll never see again.
To be "atomized" sounds like a "bad thing"...but I'm not so sure of that.
If one is disconnected from other atoms, then one is, at least in theory, free to move in one's own chosen direction.
One "connects" with other atoms on the basis of choice rather than some form of socially imposed compulsion.
In modern capitalism, this is largely an illusory "freedom"...the essential compulsions that keep capitalism running are still there and operating.
But I can't help but wonder if the illusion of freedom is not a prerequisite for the desire for real freedom to emerge?
That is, a person who is trapped in the social matrix of pre-capitalist formations (family, church, village, culture, nation, etc.) cannot really imagine what it would be like to escape all that and associate with other people only by choice.
Modern capitalism undermines the legitimacy of all those old social forms...leaving only class behind.
And they try to ideologically undermine that as well...with varying degrees of success.
I think the most likely outcome of this process is that when the "workers of the world unite", it will be a conscious and deliberate choice...not a consequence of "peer pressure" or "just going along with the crowd" or a "temporary fad", etc.
If I'm right about that, then the Leninist pretensions of "providing leadership" are all the more superfluous.
We will not need to be "led" to what we have already chosen.
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What's the proto-communist impulse in damaging your central nervous system and then having yet another meaningless emotional connection with another human being?
Meaningless?
Where is it written that there must be "meaning" in all human interactions?
Did you have a good time last night or did you have a really "meaningful good time"? *laughs*
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Perhaps you should spend more energy on challenging "existing" bourgeois values (rabid consumption, individuality, sexual "freedom") rather than attacking 2000 year old discredited mythologies.
Well, you missed this...
quote (redstar2000):
The "pleasures" promised by capitalist consumption are mostly empty!
And I did note earlier in this post that the "individuality" that capitalism permits is still largely illusory.
As someone who actually lived in the era when there were still "good girls" and "bad girls", I think considerable progress has been made...though there is still a long way to go.
But those old superstitious mythologies are still far from discredited.
Look at the Religion subforum...and see how people arrive here over and over again with the idea that one can be religious and still be "a communist".
Indeed, look at your own reluctance to reject Christian "sexual values"...trying to find a "medical" reason for people to be "chaste" or monogamous.
You sometimes sound almost like a secular Saulos of Tarsus ("St. Paul"): It's better to marry than to get AIDS.
Perhaps it's just as well that you and many (most?) Leninists have these views. It serves to "warn people off" of a paradigm that might otherwise temporarily attract them.
Like hanging up a sign: SLOW: ARCHAIC IDEAS AHEAD. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on February 18, 2006
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It's clear, I think, that this poor Leninist is just totally lost on this subject...and can only scatter words like "bourgeois" and "communist" around without regard for either their historical or their contemporary meanings.
What he actually illustrates is the accuracy of my remarks on Leninist neo-puritanism...and his willingness to over-rule what "people want" in favor of what's "good for them".
This view of "politics" actually goes all the way back to Plato -- yeah, it's true. Plato's view of a "good government" was one that would "make people virtuous".
The definition of "virtue" has changed over the past 25 centuries, but the outlook is the same. People won't be "virtuous" unless there is some authority around to "make them be virtuous".
Is it any wonder that the appeal of Leninism in the west continues to decline? Capitalist despotism is certainly bad enough...but the Leninists are "inspired" to make things even worse!
Can you imagine what it would be like if these clowns actually had state power???
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There's ample evidence that drink and drug abuse is more common in the working classes. We also know about the massive profits of the alcohol industry and drug lords.
The upper classes have many ways to "disguise" their "drink and drug abuse" and reduce their numbers in the "official total".
But suppose you were right? Again, so what?
Many workers drink alcohol, smoke tobacco and/or marijuana, and some even occasionally try a little cocaine or heroin or other drugs...usually it's only the really messed-up ones who "fall off the cliff".
And psychologically messed-up people are pretty good at "finding a cliff to fall off of" no matter what "legal fences" are in place.
You find this objectionable and wish to "save people from their own folly" at any cost!
That is, you're willing and eager to impose sensual deprivation on everyone in order to save a small minority from "hurting themselves".
As to profits, are you going to trash your computer because the computer industry makes enormous profits? Or turn off your electricity because your utility makes enormous profits?
Profit is the name of the game in capitalist society...and only a few "lifestyle anarchists" attempt to consistently avoid contributing to it.
I'm too old to live by sofa-surfing and dumpster-diving...how about you? *laughs*
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How can you say that the doping up of the working class in the interest of profit is "neutral" is baffling.
Chemicals are actually a rather trivial aspect of "doping up the working class" and at least provide a genuinely pleasurable effect.
What of religion? Or patriotism? Or dummyvision? Or racism? Or professional sports?
Those are infinitely worse forms of "doping up the working class"...and even the "pleasure" that they purport to provide is fake!
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I'm quite clear that if people want to have sex with lots of different people (I mean, c'mon, I'm not going to cast the first stone in any of these matters) then they can.
However, they must be prepared to accept being labeled by you "lumpen" and "degenerate".
It wouldn't be so bad if guys like you confined yourselves to wagging the finger of moral disapproval.
But since we've seen what the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus do to people they morally disapprove of, on what grounds should we assume that you'd be any better?
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The only bourgeois liberal criterion is "mutual consent".
What makes that a bourgeois liberal criterion is the ignored inequalities of class.
It's based on the assumption of equality when, in fact, that equality does not and cannot exist in a class society.
It's another illustration of what I spoke about earlier: the illusory quality of "individual freedom" under capitalism.
Under communism, individual freedom and mutual consent will be real.
Probably much to your dismay.
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The real communist criteria are:
a) Whose class interests does a certain phenomenon benefit?
b) What are the social conditions that create and perpetuate a given social phenomenon?
I see. You meet an attractive potential mate and do a "communist analysis" before you decide whether or not to have sex with that person. *laughs*
Whenever Leninists come up with this kind of stuff, I always just assume that they're lying. But that might not be justified...it's entirely possible that some of them really mean it.
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In Redstar's fantasy land we have a collection of "free spirits" making their way in the bourgeois utopia, free from nasty "social compulsion", free to join with other "atoms", so we can all progress together as "Individual Agents".
Substituting the word communist for your deliberately dishonest "bourgeois", that's not such a bad summary.
We will be "free spirits" under communism...something that you, no doubt, find both "utopian" and morally repugnant.
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If the goal of history is just to make sure as many people as possible can have meaningless orgasms with strangers, then surely we should just be advocating the spread of prostitution, or pornography, rather than socialism.
There's that word "meaningful" again. *laughs*
History does not have a "goal" in your Hegelian (metaphysical) sense. But even if it did, it would concern things far more important than orgasms, "meaningful" or otherwise.
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Do you have a concept of alienation?
Well, I suppose I could patch one together on the spur of the moment.
How's this: we are "alienated" when anything that we must do is controlled by others. Autonomy is what makes us human...and to be at the mercy of another's authority turns us into "tools" (or "objects") -- simple instruments of another's will.
It is one thing to freely choose to cooperate with others on some agreed-upon common project; it is quite a different thing to be compelled to obey under the threat of violence or severe material deprivation.
How's that?
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First posted at RevLeft on February 19, 2006
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quote:
Replacing the values of "patriotism", racism and religion is a new social phenomena, a product of ruling ideology like everything else in the capitalist mainstream. It, too, is designed to legitimise class inequality and prohibit class consciousness - and it's the values and practices we've been discussing.
Another Leninist "development" of Marxist theory: the "lumpenization" of the proletariat? *laughs*
A bit difficult to explain the "war on drugs" in such a context, eh?
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I do "live" my socialist, egalitarian principles as well as squawk about them on a message board.
How nice for you.
But your personal preferences are not "laws of history". You have no right to impose them on others...not even when you costume them as "socialist" or "egalitarian".
You certainly have the right to be old-fashioned. You don't have the right to make everyone behave as old-fashioned as yourself.
Publicly wagging your finger in moral disapproval will provoke a certain amount of ridicule, of course.
But you already know that.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 19, 2006
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It's indisputably clear that Lenin opposed freedom...
quote:
From the serious element in love?
From child-birth?
Freedom of adultery? Etc.
That this was not immediately implemented by the Bolsheviks is a statement of fact; that it was implemented by Stalin is also true.
That my critic assumes that Stalin "was not a real Bolshevik" is, as always, just special pleading which people outside the Leninist paradigm rightfully disregard.
Meanwhile, I take Lenin at his word...he was a really old-fashioned guy even by the standards of early 20th century feminism.
And he defended his position by claiming it was "really proletarian"...that is, that the proletariat had "old-fashioned views" and "therefore" so should communists.
My critic is a faithful Leninist in this regard. For example, he's consistently opposed any public attack on religion because "most workers" (in the U.S.) are "still religious".
He likewise supports participation in bourgeois "elections" and "defending bourgeois democratic rights" and all sorts of reformist "struggles" because "most workers still believe" in that stuff.
Another Trotskyist is opposed to "Islamophobia" because Muslims "have the right" to be superstitious.
The common thread: capitulationism is the "left jargon word" for this.
It just means that middle-class Leninists are so anxious to "unite" with the workers -- and gain influence with them -- that they dare not risk giving offense by seeming to, in Lenin's words, "insert alien views" into the class.
A Maoist told me in the late 60s that American revolutionaries "should not drive foreign cars"...we should drive Fords and Chevys to show the workers that we're "real Americans". *laughs*
quote:
It is a difference between an approach which advocates a communist morality of sexual responsibility, a responsible attitude towards the unavoidable social consequences of sex...
-- emphasis added
That's precisely what Leninists -- ancient and "modern" -- have completely missed.
That which was once "unavoidable" is now avoidable. Those "social consequences" either no longer exist or need no longer to exist. There are still some medical consequences...but they can and will be overcome.
The means of reproduction have advanced quite a bit over Lenin's day...as reflected by the enormous changes in the relations of reproduction.
Not that this is likely to be noticed within the dusty precincts of the Lenin Museum. The unseemly clamor of modernity cannot penetrate those hushed hallways...at least it hasn't so far.
Probably just as well. *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on February 20, 2006
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quote:
As we already know, anyone who disagrees with Redstar about anything is either a latent despot looking to enslave the class or a sub-Calvinist zealot.
You know, it is starting to kind of look that way. *laughs*
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When people get blinding drunk and rape someone, that behaviour is just as "conditioned" by capital as when they go out to work at the factory the next morning.
I see...before capital, people didn't get "blinding drunk" and rape was entirely unknown.
This is the sort of thing that passes for "Marxism" among my critics.
That most people who drink and even become drunk never rape anyone is "irrelevant".
Back in the 1930s, marijuana was criminalized on the basis that it was a drug "used by Negro males" to "get high" so they could "rape white women".
The "connection" was "obvious". *laughs*
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However, we also absolutely defend the right to everyone who wants one to take a job and oppose attempts by individual capitalists to sack their workers.
Careful with that "we".
I don't "defend" the "right" of people to get jobs as cops or soldiers or prison guards.
And if some especially repugnant corporation sacks all of its employees, I won't shed a tear...much less exert a gram of energy to "get their jobs back".
If, for example, some manufacturer of torture devices goes down the toilet, I will respond with a malicious chuckle.
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We're not in favour of "stopping" people behaving in "lumpen" ways - that is, we're not in favour of the ruling classes or their religious representatives stopping them.
That seems rather inconsistent on your part. If you disapprove of "lumpen ways", why shouldn't you be in favor of "stopping them" any way you can?
I "disapprove" of religion (*laughs*) and therefore anything that the capitalist ruling class does that undermines or represses religion has my approval.
Not that they do much of that sort of thing any more...but when they do, that's fine by me.
So why don't you feel the same way about repressing "lumpen behavior"?
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In communist society, people will be "free" to act how they please without infringing on the freedoms of other - the libertarian "harm principle" will actually mean something.
Sounds promising. However, as you are a Trotskyist, you believe in a "transitional workers' state" -- with the power to repress "lumpen behavior".
Why should we believe you won't do that when you have the chance?
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First posted at RevLeft on February 20, 2006
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quote:
In a capitalist society, pubs will eventually be on their way out as the need to have your own personal space and belongings becomes greater, and this is one more step in that direction and I find it deeply depressing.
This is a good point. There's even a name for it in the U.S. It's called "cocooning".
You never leave your house or apartment unless you have to. And whatever minimal socializing you do is done in your home or someone else's.
There's even been a book written about the gradual abolition of "public space"...Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam.
It would be interesting if someone were to research how smokers' behaviors have changed since the imposition of all the smoking bans.
I know in my own case that I deliberately avoid non-smoking environments whenever possible and, when I must enter one (grocery store, public library), spend as little time in them as possible.
When I was younger, I greatly enjoyed train travel...but now I travel only by private automobile since smoking is completely banned on all intercity trains in the U.S.
If I were not already retired, I'd have enormous difficulty getting a job now. I'd probably end up having to work "from home" on the internet...and just forget about all the time I spent socializing with co-workers.
In San Francisco, the anti-tobacco puritans are now pissing and moaning about the clouds of cigarette smoke at the entrances of office buildings from all the smokers forced to go outside and smoke. You can see where they're going with that: a total ban on smoking in public anywhere.
If I were young and wanted to go to a university now, I'd probably have to do it "on line"...as colleges and universities in the U.S. are increasingly banning smoking on the whole campus.
During my brief academic career (1960-62), I actually smoked in all my classes...it was normal, believe it or not.
Yes, life in late capitalist society is depressing...and likely to become more so.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 20, 2006
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quote:
A perfect means of birth control was invented when nobody but Redstar was looking? Unwanted pregnancies no longer happen?
This seems to be "on the right track"...
The morning-after Pill
Not "perfect"...but getting closer.
quote:
And then there's this little thing called sexual transmitted diseases...
Some are already curable. Others can be "controlled". There's no scientific reason that I know of that suggests that cures for any sexually transmitted disease are "impossible in principle".
Since you love to do internet research, why don't you tell us where sexually transmitted diseases rank in the overall "causes of death" in the advanced capitalist country of your choice.
Pretty far down the list, right?
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First posted at RevLeft on February 20, 2006
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More bad news for the neo-puritans...
quote (BBC):
Births out of wedlock 'pass 40%'
The proportion of children born outside marriage in the UK has leapt from 12% in 1980 to 42% in 2004, according to the Office for National Statistics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/4733330.stm
What would Lenin say??? *laughs*
quote:
RedStar, why do you keep using "neo-puritan" and all of its forms as buzzwords?
For the sake of accuracy.
For the secular neo-puritans, to do something "unhealthy" is to commit a sin!
And people must be stopped from being "sinful". It's "for their own good", of course.
Aside from the substitution of nominally secular language, the attitude of the modern neo-puritans is no different than that of a Baptist preacher c.1915!
If you get sick, it's "because" of your immoral (unhealthy) behavior and you deserve to be sick...it is righteous "punishment for your sins".
I suspect the time is not far distant when it will be seriously proposed that people who suffer from so-called "lifestyle illnesses" (sin!) should be denied life-saving medical care.
Such a proposal is the logical consequence of the neo-puritan "paradigm" that currently prevails.
The Christian fascists claimed that AIDS was "God's Punishment" for the "sin" of homosexuality. Why not claim that lung cancer is "God's Punishment" for smoking tobacco?
Or just remove the religious language and talk about "health"...the rhetoric is all the same otherwise.
Why should we, the saved (healthy living), divert scarce resources to saving the damned (unhealthy living)?
Why indeed!
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First posted at RevLeft on February 23, 2006
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quote:
Now, please, bless us here with the intelligence you're capable of, and actually argue your position.
Flattery is nice...but I try not to let my head be "turned by it".
My position is that the "science" underlying neo-puritanism is faulty.
Can I "prove" that?
Nope.
It is a matter of record that the people who began anti-tobacco research (back around 1950) had an anti-tobacco bias from the beginning.
I'm not aware of any reputable scientists ever receiving a grant to study the benefits of tobacco smoking. Such a grant proposal would be instantly rejected.
It's an "article of faith" that smoking "kills".
For example, an elderly sick patient is admitted to a hospital and subsequently dies. His chart has a notation about his smoking habits; 1ppd, 2ppd, etc.
So when they write down the official "cause of death", what do they say?
X Disease Caused By Tobacco Smoking
Scientifically speaking, "cause of death" is a very tricky thing...and you really shouldn't speak of it unless an autopsy is performed.
But less than 10% of all deaths in the U.S. receive autopsies. It's considered "disrespectful" of the dead to cut them up and see what they really died from.
It might also prove embarrassing and even financially costly if a mis-diagnosis by the attending physician can be confirmed.
Just say the bastard died from smoking!
quote:
You're disputing empirical evidence.
I don't think you'll find many people on this board who defend the scientific approach more tenaciously than a lot of the smokers here.
But science is not a social institution that exists "up in the air" somewhere. It's right down in the muck of class society and, where human behavior is concerned, subject to enormous non-scientific pressures.
Scientists in class society do not just want to "know the truth" -- they want good jobs, career advancement, respect from their peers, research grants...and lately, a piece of the commercial action on anything they might find or can make it plausibly look like they've found.
There are lots of examples of this.
For example, there were studies that showed no effects from second-hand tobacco smoke...in fact there were studies that showed that smoking 10 or fewer cigarettes per day was no different than not smoking at all.
Those results were "unsatisfactory" to the neo-puritans and so new studies were commissioned to "get the right answers"...the ones they wanted.
And all those "estimated deaths"? Unless you are familiar with all the assumptions that went into those "estimates", you're dealing with numbers that could just as easily have been pulled out of somebody's ass.
Science is not a new religion...and scientists can make mistakes!
I think we must take a scientific attitude towards science itself...that is, one of skepticism.
We are perfectly free to accept the results that seem to be plausible and reject the results that "don't make sense".
I grew up in a home where my father was a heavy smoker...but I didn't get asthma. I began smoking when I was around 14 or so...and I was up to more than a pack per day by age 20 and two packs per day by age 25. I peaked at more than three packs per day in my late 30s and early 40s. Now I smoke only about 2-1/2 packs per day and I'm approaching 64.
I've only been sick enough to see a doctor twice in the last 35 years and I haven't been hospitalized in my entire adult life even once.
Which is not to say that I won't have a fatal heart attack within 10 minutes of completing this post.
But the neo-puritan sense of contrived alarm seems to me to be wildly implausible based on my own life-time experience.
According to the anti-tobacco-ists, I shouldn't exist! I should have died some time in my 40s. *laughs*
The flat unwillingness of the neo-puritans to allow any legitimate public space for smokers speaks to their real agenda. They're not simply trying to create space for non-smokers to protect themselves; they will not be satisfied until they can put people in prison for smoking!
Sinners need to be punished "on earth" as well as "afterwards"!
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First posted at RevLeft on February 24, 2006
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quote:
Because anyone who disagrees with RedStar is obviously a Lenin worshiping, belly flopping neo-puritan.
The occurrence of this coincidence does seem to exceed chance by a substantial margin. *laughs*
quote:
This has nothing to do with "sin" or religion.
Oh? Want to take a guess who the first big anti-smoking crusader was?
quote (King James I in 1604):
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the the pit that is bottomless.
Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweatness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.
Yeah, that's the same scumbag responsible for the "King James Bible".
And it has been thus ever since.
Puritanism in religion has to do with forcing people to give up "sin".
Modern neo-puritanism has to do with forcing people to give up "unhealthy lifestyles".
You may claim, in all sincerity, that you don't want to do that...but the agenda of the neo-puritans is very clear! They DO want to do that.
They're DOING IT!
And your own support for outright bans on smoking in public spaces simply supports their agenda.
quote:
RedStar, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the "I have smoked for forty years and I am fine" argument is fallacious.
Say it a million times if you like. It's the semantic equivalent of...
Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes? *laughs*
When you get right down to it, neither you nor I nor (in all likelihood) anyone on this board is competent to discuss the actual scientific merits of the research purporting to "prove" that cigarette-smoking "causes cancer". None of us are trained experienced oncologists, right?
So what's left? You accept the slogan: "second-hand cigarette-smoke is dangerous to non-smokers."
And I don't accept it!
quote:
Find one instance of me using religious rhetoric, please.
My point is that neo-puritanical rhetoric is religiously inspired even if its terms are nominally secular.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 25, 2006
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quote:
No, but some of us (such as myself) can understand simple biology.
No...you understand how to use the "copy & paste" function in your operating system.
So do I.
Consider this...
quote:
Cigarette smoke has chemicals that are designed to "shut off" one of these genes, called pax53. The chemicals found in smoke (keep in mind, this means "passive" smokers receive this too!) were made for turning this gene, a tumor-suppressor, to its inactive form!
But those chemicals (or their analogues) must be found within the human body naturally...otherwise we'd remain the size of babies throughout our lives. Pax53 must be naturally "turned off" in order for us to grow at all.
Secondly, if your theory of causation were true, then everyone who smoked or who was exposed to smoke would inevitably get cancer.
The majority of people who smoke don't die of cancer or even get it at all; a complete contradiction to your analogy of "jumping off a building".
Or is it that most smokers have a genetic "fire brigade" that runs around after each cigarette is smoked turning pax53 "back on"? *laughs*
In any event, you are completely missing the point of this thread; the fact that we have an astonishing number of people on this board who approve of the regulation of people's "lifestyles" for "their own good".
I have not noticed that your position is one of "segregation of smokers" in public places or in favor of extra ventilation for places where smokers congregate.
No, you just want to drive it out of public life altogether...mirroring, in fact, my own position regarding religion!
Come to think of it, it might not be such a bad idea to drive secular neo-puritanism out of public life altogether!
Considering how many lives have been utterly destroyed by the "war on drugs", the "war on alcohol", the "war on immoral sexuality", and anticipating the likely effects of the "war on tobacco", secular neo-puritanism is certainly making a decent effort to rival religion as a source of reactionary totalitarianism.
The time may come when such views expressed here will result in exile to Opposing Ideologies.
And that will be just the beginning.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 25, 2006
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quote:
Well besides the whole industry ceasing to exist, making the production of cigarettes a thing of the past...
I'm glad to see you've exposed your real agenda.
And that you confirm exactly what I said about you and your allies...by abolishing the growing of tobacco and the production of cigarettes, you reveal your incorrigible neo-puritanism.
It's been already correctly pointed out what the consequences of the neo-puritanical agenda are...you'd have no choice but to reinvent the police!
And what becomes of your "communism" when you've done that? It goes down the toilet!
Like religion, neo-puritanism is always reactionary and the people who advocate it are not communists no matter what they say!
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First posted at RevLeft on February 26, 2006
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quote:
You're laughable, really.
Yes, I'm the one summoning up irrelevant "parallels" and inaccurate "metaphors" to defend an indefensible position.
Right. *laughs*
Here's the "muscle" in your post...such as it is.
quote:
There isn't a clear majority of anti-smoking? Have you seen the legislation springing up (and passing) all over the world at this point?
I've seen the hysterical reaction to contrived fear.
People are afraid of second-hand cigarette smoke because they've been screamed at by the anti-tobacco neo-puritans for a couple of decades!
What a brilliant public relations campaign.
quote:
Someone not thinking rationally, using logic only when it suits their arguments, advocating personal pleasure at the death or injury of another, ignoring fact, and continually changing their argument while maintaining a steady barrage of mudslinging and buzzwords, now that sounds like someone who is not a communist.
I'm not your kind of "communist" and wouldn't want to have anything to do with your kind of "communism".
It would be a neo-puritanical nightmare!
quote:
No matter. If the revolution comes in your lifetime, you will be slowly swept away...
Since I'm such a heavy smoker ("big sinner"), I will be worm-shit before guys like you will ever take over.
You have managed the unique achievement of making communism actually look worse than capitalism!
Congratulations.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 26, 2006
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quote:
I can't imagine that people will be slaving in fields over a product like tobacco when they could be spending time doing things they actually like, or better yet, working on productive agriculture like vegetables that people eat.
As in all other endeavors in communist society, the only people who will grow and cure tobacco are the people who want to do that.
It may well be that every smoker will have to grow his/her own tobacco...or be part of a co-operative that does this.
Or it might be possible to create a drug which confers the satisfaction of tobacco without requiring extensive agricultural labor.
There are lots of possibilities that we have no way of knowing about now.
There's a little hint in your last sentence that's problematical. If you think eating more vegetables is a credible substitute for smoking tobacco, I don't think you'll find many smokers who'll agree with you about that. *laughs*
quote:
During the decadence of the Roman Empire there was also a rise in depravity.
This was a myth invented after the fall of Rome to the barbarians.
The last two centuries of the Western Roman Empire was marked by the rise of Christianity. When Rome was taken and sacked, the remaining pagans pointed out that this was "divine punishment" for "abandoning the old gods".
We have no "depravity index" for those long-ago years, of course. But the end of the Roman Empire was preceded by the enormous expansion of Christianity and, presumably, a decline in morally "depraved" behavior.
The myth of Roman "degeneracy" was invented to counter pagan propaganda.
quote:
But it is fairly safe to say that there will be no need for a formal ban as smoking in public simply will not be tolerated by others.
If it isn't, it isn't. Smokers will voluntarily segregate themselves from non-smokers and create their own public spaces...something that the neo-puritans oppose.
What the neo-puritans want is not segregation but prohibition.
quote:
He has shown that, contrary to your initial statements, passive smoking is harmful to others.
He has shown nothing but his ability to mindlessly repeat hysterical anti-smoking propaganda.
quote:
I don't want to die because someone else is smoking next to me!
That's exactly what the neo-puritans want you to believe. If you're sitting next to someone who is smoking a cigarette, you will die!
They want smokers to be treated like lepers in the Middle Ages.
UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!
quote:
I'm not for banning private smoking, that is, smoking in your own house or outside.
Maybe you're not...but that's unacceptably permissive to the neo-puritans.
In the U.S., smoking is presently banned in nearly all or all outdoor sports arenas. Smoking is banned on all the outdoor elevated stations on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. And smoking is banned in all of San Francisco's public parks.
The very sight of someone enjoying a cigarette is "an abomination in the eyes of..." the neo-puritans.
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First posted at RevLeft on February 27, 2006
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quote:
What's interesting to me is that you maintain that science "can't be trusted" because it is telling you something you do not want to hear.
"Science" had "told us" many things...and the truth content of what it has told us is enormously higher than any other form of "telling" in history.
"Science" has also been wrong about a fair number of things. Its "accuracy" has never reached "100%".
Much of what "science" has told us is demonstrably true...the escape velocity from the earth's surface really is about 7.5 miles per second. The distance from the earth to the sun really does average about 93 million miles.
"Science" tells us that global warming is taking place...with tons of evidence to prove that. Some science says this is "mostly" or even "completely" due to human activity (burning carbon fuels and raising large numbers of cattle); other science offers different explanations.
"Evolutionary psychology" is a "science" that tells us that human behavior is a consequence of "fit genes" rather than social/economic/political causes.
I "don't like to hear that"...so it would take a genuinely enormous amount of evidence to convince me of its validity. There may be some kind of very limited truth to their hypotheses...but I think most of it's just crap!
Is smoking "truly harmful"? Possibly, at least for some.
Do smokers die somewhat earlier than non-smokers on the average? Possibly they do.
Is cigarette smoke a "deadly poison" that people must be "protected against"? Nonsense!
People smoked like smokestacks during the first half of the 20th century. Was it "like" the bubonic plague? Were people falling down dead all over the place? Just dropping like flies from the dense clouds of deadly poison in every home, workplace, public bar or restaurant?
Now, some "science" tells us that "doom is at hand"...if people are not prevented from smoking or being around smokers, "millions and millions" of people will die prematurely...by "decades".
The neo-puritans -- who always disapproved of smoking before there was so much as a particle of evidence in their favor -- have seized upon what "science" they can muster to promote the hysterical fear that the very smell of cigarette smoke will "cause you to die an early and horrible death".
At best, this is the calculated mis-use of science to enforce an anti-scientific agenda: namely, that human behavior should and must be regulated in order to maximize life-span regardless of any other consideration.
It's the same assumption that motivates opposition to voluntary euthanasia for terminally-ill patients...people "must" be "kept alive" regardless of their suffering.
Human life "belongs to God". *laughs*
quote:
Rich Cappie Number 1 grows cigarettes and sells them at exorbitant prices to the poor, who smoke the highest proportion, as you yourself pointed out. Not only does the Rich Cappie get wealthy, but he is literally poisoning the poor at unprecedented levels! As if that weren't enough, the government, owned and operated by bourgeois aristocrats, raises taxes to redistribute the wealth even further to the upper class and their own bourgeois counties (via "pork"). Furthermore, health care costs rise, making it even more difficult for the poor cigarette smokers to get health care!
Your attempt at "class analysis", while perhaps admirable in intent, is woefully inadequate...to say the least.
Cigarettes are not "grown", they are manufactured.
Today, tobacco is grown by petty-bourgeois peasants...small businessmen. The great "tobacco plantations" worked by slave-labor in the 18th and 19th centuries have disappeared.
Though large corporations still control the bulk of cigarette manufacturing, there has recently been (in the U.S.) an explosion of small cigarette plants...producing cheap tobacco products. In fact, there are brands now manufactured by Native American tribes on the reservations. These can be easily ordered over the internet...avoiding many of the taxes imposed by the state governments.
The sharp rise in "health care costs" has nothing to do with smoking cigarettes at all. It's almost entirely a product of large pharmaceutical corporations charging ever higher prices for medications that may be even less effective.
And there are other causes as well...
Doctor is in -- for a price
As to "literally poisoning", well, we smokers still have a choice about that...though not if you have your way.
None of us gets much of a choice when it comes to breathing the exhausts from urban traffic...and no one says that the giant auto corporations are "poisoning" not only their customers but anyone who lives close to heavy traffic.
All rather ironic. In Los Angeles, you can be ejected from a bar or restaurant (and even fined!) for lighting up a cigarette...and when you walk out the door, the smog is so thick that you can't see more than two blocks in any direction and your eyes begin to water.
Ain't neo-puritanism just great! *laughs*
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First posted at RevLeft on February 28, 2006
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