The Dark Enlightenment

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 02-05-2014 2:58am #1

Are any of you familiar with this recent online trend?

http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/uncategorized/dark-enlightenment-creepy-internet-movement-youd-better-take-seriously/

Essentially there are a growing number of blogs and other websites promoting a reactionary right-wing ideology. They are opposed to feminism, egalitarianism and the ideals of the enlightenment believing that a more aristocratic form of society is needed. Many of its adherents are also skeptical of any kind of equality between races. The general consenus among them is that western civilization is in decline and will collapse unless their advice is heeded. While it's so far mostly confined to online discussion without any mainstream political campaigning, I find it intriguing that such a ideology is finding support. Have you any of you encountered it before?

Manach · 04-05-2014 4:22pm

Thanks for links - always good to have some fellow travellers out there but I suspect these are mostly basically old school Burkean conservatives embracing the newer modes of communication.

KyussBishop · 05-05-2014 10:55pm

Just another neo-fascist movement; the time with which these types of movements tend to gain more headway, is during economic turmoil.

PopePalpatine · 08-05-2014 4:17pm

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Are any of you familiar with this recent online trend?

http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/uncategorized/dark-enlightenment-creepy-internet-movement-youd-better-take-seriously/

Essentially there are a growing number of blogs and other websites promoting a reactionary right-wing ideology. They are opposed to feminism, egalitarianism and the ideals of the enlightenment believing that a more aristocratic form of society is needed. Many of its adherents are also skeptical of any kind of equality between races. The general consenus among them is that western civilization is in decline and will collapse unless their advice is heeded. While it's so far mostly confined to online discussion without any mainstream political campaigning, I find it intriguing that such a ideology is finding support. Have you any of you encountered it before?

The Iona Insti-oh, it's confined to the Internet. Never mind.

Valmont · 24-06-2014 12:38pm

I'm not so sure feminism and egalitarianism were the ideals of the enlightenment, were they? The dogged persistence of what we now experience as 'political correctness' with regard to feminism and egalitarianism seems to me be counter to the enlightenment ideal of freedom of thought and criticism over dogmatism. Granted, I haven't looked at any the blogs, so don't judge me too quickly.

Permabear · 25-06-2014 10:52am

This post has been deleted.

Labarbapostiza · 09-09-2014 10:05pm

Valmont wrote: »

The dogged persistence of what we now experience as 'political correctness' with regard to feminism and egalitarianism seems to me be counter to the enlightenment ideal of freedom of thought and criticism over dogmatism.

You mean when chauvinists and racists use their free speech to let the rest of the world know their free thoughts.....The people who hold opposing views respond to them. Give them a verbal kicking. The racists and chauvinists are bewildered. it's hard to tell what they were thinking, did they assume no one could talk back. They say things like "But what about free speech?"

Labarbapostiza · 09-09-2014 11:14pm

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

The thing that puts me on the edge of murder, when it comes to libertarianism, is that many who fly under that flag are in fact authoritarian right-wingers who see libertarianism as vehicle to take them to their Utopia. Paradoxically, they want the freedom to not have freedom.

There is a shared language in libertarianism but the speakers often have completely different meanings assigned to the words.

Let's take libertarianism in rural America. First I'll explain how life works in rural America. 50 to 80% income of corn and beef farmers is government subsidies, through direct payments or market manipulation. Then much of the rest of the employment is in building infrastructure, school teachers and school administration (there are more school bureaucrats in America than teachers), policing, and prisons. Jobs are allotted on the basis of class. Private enterprise in rural America sucks heavily on the breasts of government.

So why would these people be against the "state"?

It has to do with a shift in demographics. Traditionally, American government was controlled by white wealthy people who lived in rural areas. In the process of their governance, they allowed the white rural middle-class to rig the system so they got all the cheese. Groups like Latinos, blacks and the urban working class, got little or nothing, and in many instance purely bad. In their schools the teachers would often be white rural middle-class people, usually a little shop soiled or socially broken in some way that precluded them from getting better teaching jobs in white rural schools. The "state" the rural "libertarians" fear, is a state that cuts off the gravy train for them. They're idea of freedom, is to create authoritarian enclaves, that are still financed by urban government but where the urban political apparatus has no say over how this money is spent.

When farmers bellyache about big government, what they really mean is the government is spending someone else's money on someone else, and not them; the people who truly deserve it.

Because "democracy" is an unquestioned good (after all, nobody can be
against democracy without being branded a right-wing reactionary) then
the gargantuan left-liberal bureaucratic state (he calls it the "Cathedral")
that emerges from democracy is also an unquestioned good.

Bureaucracy for the sake of giving people employment, isn't necessarily a left-wing thing. It's done by both left and right. But most of the time it's the right-wing upper-middleclass who benefit from quangos. Fundamentally, right-wing ideology believes that we should collectively fund the upper-classes, to live their nice lives, even if their activities are economically worthless, but so that we have social leadership.

The Corinthian · 17-09-2014 4:24pm

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Bureaucracy for the sake of giving people employment, isn't necessarily a left-wing thing. It's done by both left and right. But most of the time it's the right-wing upper-middleclass who benefit from quangos.

Clearly you have not read up about Communism and control economies.

Fundamentally, right-wing ideology believes that we should collectively fund the upper-classes, to live their nice lives, even if their activities are economically worthless, but so that we have social leadership.

Amen... at least that's normally what one answers at the end of a sermon...

Also, I really don't see where Feminism comes into any of this, outside of modern Western Feminism being a largely middle class, libertarian movement that swings between seeking equality and ducking back into chauvinism whenever it suits the interests of the constituency it represents. Would it be one of these right-wing groups you speak of?

Labarbapostiza · 17-09-2014 10:12pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

Clearly you have not read up about Communism and control economies.

The Russians based their bureaucracies on American corporate bureaucracies. They believed, even Lenin, that the bureaucracies were the magic of America's wealth. A big problem for the rest of the world is the examples America sets. People look to America and see them doing something, and then think "well, if they're doing it ...then we must do it...And we'll be rich as America".

Without getting into the theory of how and what bureaucracies are. But they have a tendency to grow like a fungal infection.

The UK spends 50 billion a year on quangos You might imagine they employ professional revolutionaries, left-wing intellectuals, bolshie workers. They don't.

Morgan Kelly gave a lecture recently, it's on Youtube. One of the things he covered is how UCD are growing their bureaucracy, but sacking teachers. Again, those bureaucrats are not communists.

If you want to see something horrific, look what they've done with the American education system. It's the highest spending education system in the world, yet it gets PISA scores lower that countries classed to be developing nations.

At the start of the 20th century, American schools were much like European schools. Some teachers, children, and one person who did light clerical work, and maybe a cleaner.

Look what's happened now.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/03/administrative-bloat-educratification-in-americas-public-schools-educrats-now-outnumber-teachers-in-25-states/

Also, I really don't see where Feminism comes into any of this, outside of
modern Western Feminism being a largely middle class,

Yes, I understand who you would think that. Anti-feminism doesn't apparently sit well with Libertarian theory. Unless of course, the "libertarians" have some weird twists in their theory. Which they do. Big bad government is enforcing "feminism" on women. So, the father/husband/"natural" held of household, is having their freedom to control their women folk taken away from them. (Libertarians tend to reach for "nature", to justify illiberal beliefs they may have; like homophobia, racism, sexism, whatever you're having.) If you want get a picture of the moderate form of this, look at Stefan Molyneux's videos on Youtube.

This crazy stuff is also tied into the PUA movement; (pick up artist). The mad theory goes; feminism has destroyed young women, turning them from chaste subservience to independent and nasty slutishness. But sluts who will only have sex with Alpha males (in PUA theory Alpha males are the assholes, while Beta males, are the "perfect gentlemen"). If it wasn't for feminism, young women would be having sex with Beta males - remember Elliot Rogers......The perfect gentleman.

libertarian movement that swings between seeking equality and ducking back into chauvinism whenever it suits the interests of the constituency it
represents. Would it be one of these right-wing groups you speak of?

One of libertarianism's fatal flaws, is the general anarchy in the cannon of its' theory. I can't remember the name of the specific offshoot I came across. But what they want is a return to feudalism.

You can say all this stuff is not Libertarianism, because it does seem to fly in the face of Libertarianism's fundamental liberalism......But these groups call themselves Libertarians.

The wealthy in America, are the most state coddled people in the world. They just don't realise it. Even if their cheques are coming from Uncle Sam. Look at Clive Bundy, the Libertarian cattle rancher, shaking his fist at big bad government while collecting subsidy payments from them. And also waving guns around and threatening to shoot government agents. If he was white and poor, forget black and poor, they'd fill him full of lead.

The Corinthian · 18-09-2014 6:26am

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

The Russians based their bureaucracies on American corporate bureaucracies.

This is the only thing you wrote that was in even vaguely in response to what I wrote on bureaucracies, the rest was irrelevant to my point.

So let's recap; you claimed that the bureaucracy was something that mainly benefited the middle class, implying (given your overall argument) that it is principally right wing, rather than left wing. I challenged this assertion citing communisms over-dependence on bureaucracy.

To this you counter claim that the communists just copied the American (capitalists), without bothering to back this up. Even if this were true, that does not imply that bureaucracy is principally a right wing - at most it just says that one group took an idea from another and made it their own.

Yes, I understand who you would think that. Anti-feminism doesn't apparently sit well with Libertarian theory. Unless of course, the "libertarians" have some weird twists in their theory. Which they do. Big bad government is enforcing "feminism" on women. So, the father/husband/"natural" held of household, is having their freedom to control their women folk taken away from them. (Libertarians tend to reach for "nature", to justify illiberal beliefs they may have; like homophobia, racism, sexism, whatever you're having.) If you want get a picture of the moderate form of this, look at Stefan Molyneux's videos on Youtube.

This crazy stuff is also tied into the PUA movement; (pick up artist). The mad theory goes; feminism has destroyed young women, turning them from chaste subservience to independent and nasty slutishness. But sluts who will only have sex with Alpha males (in PUA theory Alpha males are the assholes, while Beta males, are the "perfect gentlemen"). If it wasn't for feminism, young women would be having sex with Beta males - remember Elliot Rogers......The perfect gentleman.

Nothing you have responded is even vaguely connected to what I wrote. Big bad government? Head of the household? Alpha males? Where did these come from?

Would you like to address what I actually wrote now?

Labarbapostiza · 18-09-2014 4:09pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

This is the only thing you wrote that was in even vaguely in response to what I wrote on bureaucracies, the rest was irrelevant to my point.

So let's recap; you claimed that the bureaucracy was something that mainly benefited the middle class, implying (given your overall argument) that it is principally right wing, rather than left wing. I challenged this assertion citing communisms over-dependence on bureaucracy.

To this you counter claim that the communists just copied the American (capitalists), without bothering to back this up. Even if this were true, that does not imply that bureaucracy is principally a right wing - at most it just says that one group took an idea from another and made it their own.

It's simple a this. You do not know your history. The Soviet system was a capitalist system. They had a banking system and everything. The only difference was all enterprises belonged to the state, so in theory, the profits from such enterprises would go to the people, and not a minority of fat cats.

Before Lenin and Stalin, Russia was an incredibly backward agrarian country. They rapidly industrialised, using American industry as a blue print. They had to create a modern government bureaucracy. Which they again modelled on modern western bureaucracies. With all this there's nothing specifically communist.

I'm not here to give you a history lesson. It is a fact Stalin took Russia from the wooden plough, to the atomic bomb. While in Ireland...over the same period it was the intention of the ruling classes to deindustrialise and take us back to the wooden plough. Ireland was worse in so many ways.

Soviet Russia had in fact less bureaucrats that western countries. There are more pointless bureaucrats in the American public school system than there were in the entire Soviet Nomenklatura.

Nothing you have responded is even vaguely connected to what I wrote. Big
bad government? Head of the household? Alpha males? Where did these come from?

I'm giving you the state of play in contemporary libertarianism.

The Corinthian · 18-09-2014 4:39pm

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

It's simple a this. You do not know your history. The Soviet system was a capitalist system. They had a banking system and everything. The only difference was all enterprises belonged to the state, so in theory, the profits from such enterprises would go to the people, and not a minority of fat cats.

I'm afraid you are a bit clueless on economics. Communism was not capitalist, because it rejected numerous fundamental tenets of capitalism - in particular the free market. Supply was planned in the Soviet economy (it's called a planned or command economy, btw), which is the antithesis of a capitalist free market system.

Do you actually even know what defines either economic system?

Before Lenin and Stalin, Russia was an incredibly backward agrarian country. They rapidly industrialised, using American industry as a blue print. They had to create a modern government bureaucracy. Which they again modelled on modern western bureaucracies. With all this there's nothing specifically communist.

As I've already pointed out, that they borrowed some methods doesn't prove a lot - certainly not your assertion that bureaucracies are a capitalist cornerstone. All before we consider you have failed to give a single source for any of this.

I'm not here to give you a history lesson.

Then don't, I don't think you're qualified to do so, TBH.

Soviet Russia had in fact less bureaucrats that western countries. There are more pointless bureaucrats in the American public school system than there were in the entire Soviet Nomenklatura.

Source?

I'm giving you the state of play in contemporary libertarianism.

No, you're giving me your opinion.

Labarbapostiza · 18-09-2014 6:14pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

I'm afraid you are a bit clueless on economics. Communism was not capitalist, because it rejected numerous fundamental tenets of capitalism - in particular the free market. Supply was planned in the Soviet economy (it's called a planned or command economy, btw), which is the antithesis of a capitalist free market system.

No, you don't understand the fundamentals. Lenin, taking Marx's theory further, believed the next stage of development would be capitalism under state control, and the state being the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx is a very important figure in economics, simply because no one else at the time had sat down to codify what this particular form of capitalism that had existed and continued to grow, with explosive effects, in the 19th century was. And what was true for 19th century England; the rich had never been richer, or lived so sumptuously, but average person was seeing a great decline in their standard of living. The average 19th century English person was smaller and sicker than those of the 17th. William Blake's Dark Satanic Mills, belched choking sulphurous coal smoke. It looked like the apocalypse was coming.

Lenin's first economic policy was to have large industry state controlled, but to leave small businesses in private hands. This worked very well, had it been left at that, Russia may have been able to become as wealthy as America in a short space of time. Russia has far more natural resources than America. When Stalin took over, all private businesses became state owned.

You don't need capitalism to have a free market. In the Soviet union there was elements of the free market. Just as here there have Stalinesque riggings of all kinds of markets. If you buy milk from a farmer, for your own personal consumption, you're both breaking the law. The only way milk can be sold for human consumption, is if it has been industrially processed. Was public safety in mind, or was it the desire to create Soviet like monopolies. For decades in Ireland, the only cheese you could buy, was the awful stuff produced by the big dairies. And since there was no competition, they all produced the same rubbish. Ireland was riddled with regulations that purely served to protect incumbents. The local shop had stale bread, sour milk, a few tins of peas, and they could get away with it. In the 50s, most people in Ireland had potatoes and gravy for dinner; Irish meat being exported to the developed economies to provide Ireland with hard currency. Very similar things happened in the Soviet Union; in Romania, pigs trotters were called patriots, because they were the only part of the pig that didn't leave the country.

The Corinthian · 18-09-2014 8:32pm

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

No, you don't understand the fundamentals. Lenin, taking Marx's theory further, believed the next stage of development would be capitalism under state control, and the state being the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx is a very important figure in economics, simply because no one else at the time had sat down to codify what this particular form of capitalism that had existed and continued to grow, with explosive effects, in the 19th century was. And what was true for 19th century England; the rich had never been richer, or lived so sumptuously, but average person was seeing a great decline in their standard of living. The average 19th century English person was smaller and sicker than those of the 17th. William Blake's Dark Satanic Mills, belched choking sulphurous coal smoke. It looked like the apocalypse was coming.

Lenin's first economic policy was to have large industry state controlled, but to leave small businesses in private hands. This worked very well, had it been left at that, Russia may have been able to become as wealthy as America in a short space of time. Russia has far more natural resources than America. When Stalin took over, all private businesses became state owned.

Waffle. Seriously, point to a single line in the above which is even vaguely relevant to my last response to you.

You don't need capitalism to have a free market. In the Soviet union there was elements of the free market. Just as here there have Stalinesque riggings of all kinds of markets. If you buy milk from a farmer, for your own personal consumption, you're both breaking the law. The only way milk can be sold for human consumption, is if it has been industrially processed. Was public safety in mind, or was it the desire to create Soviet like monopolies. For decades in Ireland, the only cheese you could buy, was the awful stuff produced by the big dairies. And since there was no competition, they all produced the same rubbish. Ireland was riddled with regulations that purely served to protect incumbents. The local shop had stale bread, sour milk, a few tins of peas, and they could get away with it. In the 50s, most people in Ireland had potatoes and gravy for dinner; Irish meat being exported to the developed economies to provide Ireland with hard currency. Very similar things happened in the Soviet Union; in Romania, pigs trotters were called patriots, because they were the only part of the pig that didn't leave the country.

What on Earth are you on about? You've claimed that the Soviet Union had some sort of free market then fail to actually explain how, let alone give any evidence or sources pointing to this. I explained to you why the Soviet system did not have a free market already, in fact it was only in the 1980's that they finally began to try to reform their crumbling system to introduce demand driven economics.

With respects you don't appear to understand economic theory. Certainly you have no clue about what you're discussing here. I appreciate you're some sort of amateur who may have read a few things and formed opinions, but you are ironically completely incorrect on pretty much all the economic fundamentals.

I suggest you read up on Alexei Kosygin's attempted reforms of the Soviet economy as he recognised the flaws of the planned economy, for example - in complete contrast to your 'curious' view that the Soviet Union had some form of 'market economy'.

Labarbapostiza · 18-09-2014 9:57pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

I explained to you why the Soviet system did not have a free market already, in fact it was only in the 1980's that they finally began to try to reform their crumbling system to introduce demand driven economics.

And when they introduced free market reforms did Russia spring into life?

Why the system was crumbling in the first place is because oil prices had collapsed through the 80s, you can go look up the graphs yourself. The struggled to finance their debts. They had used oil to finance imports they needed, they used alternatives to oil, exporting anything they could get cash for. Trade embargoes were being completely ignored.

Look at Putin's Russia. Is it doing well because of free market reforms, or is it just because of high oil prices, and that he's used oil cash to completely recreate the structures of the old Soviet Union.

If cooler heads prevail, Russia can be bankrupt again, just by upping production to give it an oil shock.

I appreciate you're some sort of amateur

And you're some kind of professional?...Do tell?

Labarbapostiza · 19-09-2014 12:51am

This is a very interesting article......slightly tangential to the thread but relevant all the same

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/bureaucrats-and-russian-transition-the-politics-accommodation

The Corinthian · 19-09-2014 8:56am

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

And when they introduced free market reforms did Russia spring into life?

Why do you keep on changing the goalposts?

First of all you try to sell the idea that the Soviet system was somehow capitalist because they allegedly (you never supply any source to back this up) copied the American bureaucratic system and because they had "a banking system and everything". You further claimed that the USSR there were "elements of the free market", again never supplying any source to back this up and in direct contradiction of the fact that the Soviet economy was a classic planned economy.

You finally seem to accept in your last post that the USSR didn't have a free market after all, and only began introducing tentative market reforms during Perestroika from 1986 - at the very end - thus contradicting your earlier claims of the Soviet system somehow being associated with the free market of capitalist in nature.

Now somehow you want to sell us the idea that you were right all along because these tentative market reforms began to appear in the last five years of it's 70-year history. Who do you think you're fooling, seriously?

From the onset, you have simply been been giving what appears to be an ill thought out personal opinion and 'facts' that are either unsubstantiated or have turned out to be false. Whenever challenged you've changed the goalposts and your responses have had nothing to do with the posts you've responded to.

Why the system was crumbling in the first place is because oil prices had collapsed through the 80s, you can go look up the graphs yourself.

I can and while prices stagnated all they did was drop to late 1970's levels, they still remained significantly higher than their pre-1974 levels; so not exactly a collapse, is it?

Indeed the idea that it was all down to oil prices isn't exactly supported by anyone other than yourself, from what I can see. Or do you have any credible sources that mirror your analysis?

And you're some kind of professional?...Do tell?

My pointing out that you're an armature is because your immediate response to challenging your assertions was to come out with such choice lines like:

"I'm giving you the state of play in contemporary libertarianism."
"I'm not here to give you a history lesson."
"No, you don't understand the fundamentals"

...as if you're some sort of expert, when in reality you have made errors in even the most basic points.

So it really doesn't matter if I am a 'professional' or not, I'm just pointing out you certainly are not. In fact, you've probably demonstrated that you know less than anyone else who's posted to this thread.

Labarbapostiza · 19-09-2014 8:58pm

The Corinthian wrote: »

Why do you keep on changing the goalposts?

No...I'm trying to point the goal posts out to you.

First of all you try to sell the idea that the Soviet system was somehow
capitalist because they allegedly (you never supply any source to back this up) copied the American bureaucratic system and because they had "a banking system and everything".

Read the Wiki page on Gosbank.

While your at it you may as well look up the Gosplan.

You further claimed that the USSR there were "elements of the free
market", again never supplying any source to back this up and in direct
contradiction of the fact that the Soviet economy was a classic planned
economy.

The USSR did not have an unchanging system. In naïve theory, it might be assumed that while all bars of soap are essentially the same, it would be the most efficient step to manufacture just market one bar of soap. The Russians would be paid Russian cash from their jobs, and spend it as they pleased, if they're not spending it in a predictable fashion, that causes problems for the system. So, they did come around to having different brands of soap, drinks, foods, etc. And different manufacturers who were in competition. As regards monopolies, they only found out they were bad around the same time as us.

There were all kinds of grey markets. Peasants were allowed, and encouraged to produce foods like hams, sausage and cheeses, for sale in local markets. Luxury goods, like Russian fur hats were not the product of state owned industrial collectives. They were made by individuals for cash.

You finally seem to accept in your last post that the USSR didn't have a free market after all, and only began introducing tentative market reforms during Perestroika from 1986 - at the very end - thus contradicting
your earlier claims of the Soviet system somehow being associated with the free market of capitalist in nature.

"Market reforms" weren't Gorbachev's intention. This language was used to kiss up to the west, who at that point, with Thatcher and Regan were besotted by "free market" blather. Gorbachev had no intention of ending communism. To save the system, and most importantly to Gorbachev; the Nomenklatura, they needed a reduction in the economic embargoes, because they needed the cash.

Indeed the idea that it was all down to oil prices isn't exactly supported by anyone other than yourself, from what I can see. Or do you have any credible sources that mirror your analysis?

The majority of the "analysis" in the last 30 odd or whatever it's been years has been from happy clappy "free market" boosters. Completely ignoring the reality of how the Soviet Union actually functioned.

The Soviet Union always needed hard currency for imports. There were no rubber plantations in the SU, where do you think they got the rubber for their tyres? Companies who produced goods were given hard currency to import materials they needed. The SU raised the cash through oil sales...also through labour (several major Western car manufacturers had plants in the SU, to take advantage of cheap labour), anything they could sell to the west. Of course there were embargoes, but these were bypassed both by US and European companies using shell companies to trade with the SU, and the SU, by running materials through places like Finland.

The central state planners of the Gosplan, dictated how companies should supply resources to each other, and what resources should be allotted to the companies, even hard currency. But this is not how the companies worked. They fulfilled the Gosplan quotas, but they used "fixers" as go-betweens. A car manufacturer would need some copper, a television manufacture would need some aluminium, the fixer would arrange a swap. Often cash changed hands - cars, televisions, etc. The "fixers" were completely outside of state control, and they were not part of the plan. The only reason the Russians could produce manufactured goods was because they had an unofficial economy outside of state control.

Now, how the oil prices screwed them. In the 70s as the oil prices rose, the Russians had much more cash. This meant they could import more, and the unofficial economy functioned better. All the manufacturers have materials to swap with each other, and they have cash to buy materials outside their Gosplan allotments to either raise cash, or swap for other materials.

The higher the oil prices climbed the better they did. The Russians bypassed embargoes to borrow against their oil product. But as the oil price declined, they had to divert other produce to the west to raise cash; this is when the food shortages began. But the shortage of cash had an even more severe effect on the unofficial economy between manufacturers. They had difficulty buying the imported materials they needed for production, and the materials they needed for barter. The whole chain of production began to collapse. The state planners had no control over it, because no one had ever really been following their plan.

This is where Gorbachev and his Perestroika and Glasnost come in. As the oil price began to fall, the Russians need something else to replace the shortfall. In the early 80s, they proposed the gas network (that now exists) running through the Ukraine and into Germany. America vetoed the pipeline. Now the Russians were in big trouble. So Gorbachev comes on all hugs and kisses, hoping his sucking up will allow the gas pipeline. It doesn't, oil prices continue to fall and Russia grinds to a halt. It's so bad, even the oil production can't function properly.

At the very end, virtually nothing functioned. Russia needed food aid, and fuel aid.

All the other accounts, range from nonsense like Pope John Paul brought down the Soviet Union, through the power of prayer, or that people had just had enough, and rose up, demanding freedom. All nonsense.

1_123125_123036_2279754_2279783_110103_for_oilagression.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

1_123125_123036_2279754_2279783_110103_for_oilagression.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

My pointing out that you're an armature

Oh, I'm an armature now....be the hokey god.

The Corinthian · 20-09-2014 11:41am

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

No...I'm trying to point the goal posts out to you.

No, you're changing them. We've gone from arguing on one thing then you change the argument so that it becomes another and another, and all along you fail to address the previous points - you still have not addressed the contradiction of the USSR, a planned economy, somehow being 'capitalist'.

Read the Wiki page on Gosbank.

A central bank; how does that make the USSR capitalist?

While your at it you may as well look up the Gosplan.

I'm aware of Gosplan. Tell me how this made the USSR more 'capitalist' as you claim?

Oh, I'm an armature now....be the hokey god.

Yes you are an amateur (glad a typo gave you so much pleasure), so you are in no position to give the state of play or history lessons in anything, let alone fundamentals in something you clearly have no clue on.

Permabear · 25-09-2014 7:11pm

This post has been deleted.

Sand · 26-09-2014 8:24pm

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

This crazy stuff is also tied into the PUA movement; (pick up artist). The mad theory goes; feminism has destroyed young women, turning them from chaste subservience to independent and nasty slutishness. But sluts who will only have sex with Alpha males (in PUA theory Alpha males are the assholes, while Beta males, are the "perfect gentlemen"). If it wasn't for feminism, young women would be having sex with Beta males - remember Elliot Rogers......The perfect gentleman.

I've always found the public reaction to Elliot Rogers curious. I read through his manifesto (it's a tough read) and its clear he had two huge issues: rampant narcissism and a complete lack of basic social skills. His inability to communicate with women are widely reported, and commonly assigned as his basic motivation. However, he was just as unable to relate to men and he began his killing spree with men - he killed 4 men, 2 women. He wounded 5 men and 2 women. Men seem to have either been incredibly unlucky or his primary target. In his manifesto he obsesses about killing his younger brother. Not in some misguided attempt to protect him from a cruel world of evil females, but to ensure that his brother could not have a successful life where Elliot had not.

Rather than being influenced by PUA, or repelled by feminism, Elliot's narcissism simply couldn't process the fact that other men were sexually active and successful and he was not. He seems to have primarily hated men who highlighted his own personal failures.

If there is a dark enlightenment, I think its increasingly common from the wilder fringes of feminist (as opposed to egalitarian)/environmentalist and statist thought leaking into the mainstream with policies at odds with basic personal freedoms or justice increasingly being justified by a positive end. The Guardian in particular is an amazingly brilliant paper. Columnist A seizes on an event and uses it to make widespread generalisations about men, whites, tories, the western world, etc. Meanwhile Columnist B seizes on an event and decries crude generalisations made about women, muslims/blacks/asians, labour, anywhere foreign (except the US of course - gun crazy, bible totting racists so they are).

As Putins Russia demonstrates, we are increasingly moving towards a world where the very concept of objective truth is fading out. Instead history will be written as people very sure of their righteousness believe it ought to be. Rodgers, in my opinion, is an example.

Scofflaw · 27-09-2014 1:54am

Sand wrote:

As Putins Russia demonstrates, we are increasingly moving towards a world where the very concept of objective truth is fading out. Instead history will be written as people very sure of their righteousness believe it ought to be.

I'm not sure that's exactly a new thing.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Labarbapostiza · 28-09-2014 6:36pm

Permabear wrote: »

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Listen, I have no doubt you're trolling me. I don't believe for a second you believe any of that Alex Jones NWO nonsense. But you see value in promoting that tripe, because you see the nonsense as a way of protecting your way of life. I'm not calling you a liar. I believe you believe your dishonesty is serving a greater truth; that greater truth being your own self interest.

On the 22nd of January, 1905, in St. Petersburg, the Tsar ordered his men to fire into a mass of peaceful petitioners (not protesters). They were petitioning the Tsar for labour regulations. As many as 4,000 peaceful unarmed men, women and children were butchered. The Tsar's regime was brutally oppressive, and incompetent. He believed the working class and peasants were his slaves (serf is another word for slave). There was mass starvation in Russia due to food being exported to fund the Tsar and his family's lavish lifestyle, his imperial military ambitions and failures.

The land in Russia did not belong to the peasants, as is often misrepresented in western propaganda. It belonged to the aristocrats. The communists seized this land and created highly efficient and productive Sovietkhoz and Kolkhoz farms. These were modelled on highly productive American super farms (the kind "free market" "libertarian" rural Americans have been trying to suppress for over a hundred years). Peasants were allotted their own private lots of land, which they could produce food on for their own consumption and for market. Instances of mass starvation were due to episodes of war. In the civil war, the Whites controlled large parts of the countryside. Their main tactic was to destroy crops in an effort to starve the urban population into submission. The Whites did not have an urban support, because they believed in enslaving working class people to serve them.

The Tsar and his family, and several hundred aristocrats, who couldn't run away fast enough were butchered. But as you see from Bloody Sunday 1905, these people were callous butchers. Had they clung to power they would have been worse than Stalin. Though instead of modernising Russia, like Stalin, their intention was to keep it a backward agrarian dump. A lot like Ireland was I suppose. You can weep for butchers all you like, but I will not.

Ireland's history of food shortages is ignored because it doesn't support the national myths. In the 1950s, Irish farmers were ignoring the domestic markets and shipping the vast bulk of food produce in Ireland to post-war Europe, whose agricultural land had not yet recovered from the effects of war. The diet of much of the urban population was reduced to rations of potatoes and gravy. And for many people tea, bread and butter. Diseases like scurvy and rickets became common, as well as many deaths through starvation. In Russia of the same period, even after a devastating war, the diet and standard of living of the average Russian was higher than it had ever been.

In Ireland, tax ostensibly for social welfare was being diverted to funding the vast army of the religious. Babies who couldn't be adopted were put in dying rooms, and then dumped in septic tanks, after their little souls had gone off up to heaven. Stalin did a lot of bad things, but be the hokey, he wouldn't stoop to the level of an Irish nun. No matter what people say about him, he did at least have a little bit of humanity left.

Rural American "libertarians" aren't afraid of Gulags and Socialism. They fear the end of a very special kind of socialism they've cultivated. What they fear is the urban population going "that's it ye tinkers, no more socialism....it's time for some personal responsibility." This is what all the clap trap is about. The vast majority of black people in Ferguson Missouri work. They receive low pay, for historical reasons, but their labour is profitable and economically productive. Though the tax from the economic product of their labour is used to fund the rural Missouri 'way of life'. The little benefit they receive from this spending is in the form of white policemen who keep them in their place through violence. They're criticised for receiving food stamps that are a pittance, while the big hogs in rural Missouri are all driving around in big cars, and eating themselves into wheel chairs, and not a slight bit of shame or bother on them.

Permabear · 28-09-2014 9:13pm

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Labarbapostiza · 28-09-2014 9:55pm

Permabear wrote: »

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Millions did not die due to collectivisation. Serfs did not own the land - the land was privately held by aristocrats, who would turn up and collect their "rent" by making off with most of their crops. Famines like the Irish potato famine were a regular feature of Russian peasant life. Collectivisation was taking the aristocrats land, giving the peasants tractors, feritlisers, seeds, and modernising a system that had already existed. Before all they had was the would plough, and grabby aristocrats who didn't give a damn. After they never had more food than at any time in their lives. And then they had industrial goods they had never consumed - the aristocrats never gave the peasants money for their crops, they would just confiscate. Now they had fabrics, soaps, medicines. All kinds of industrial products they had never seen in their lives.

The Whites in the civil war did cause mass hunger. They burned wheat crops before harvest. Their strategy was to destroy the cities by starving them to death. Much is made of what happened to the Whites when the Reds caught up to them...But what would you do?

or extolling the "humanity" of one of history's greatest genocidists, Josef
Stalin, deserve only to be dismissed as revisionist claptrap.

All I said was he had more humanity than an Irish nun. That doesn't make him Mother Teresa. Irish nuns probably killed more people proportionally to Stalin in Russian, through their mother and baby death camps, and their bogus TB hospitals with no medicine. My grandmother died in one of those. Should I forgive?.....Should I forgive, or should I look for, and deliver vengeance?

Were Mao, Pol Pot, and Castro a great bunch of lads as well?

One, Mao is blamed for millions dying in famine. While ignoring the fact the Japanese destroyed all they could in their retreat, even Stalin looted the place as he was "liberating" it. But look at China now....See where Communism has taken them. Was it all worth it?....Ask the Chinese.

Pol Pot. Why he gets lobbed in with the communists I never understand. He was an agrarianist, That is someone who believes that ignorant country people are good and pure, while urban dwellers are corrupted and wicked. And the old ways are the best. He forced the Cambodians to leave their cities and labour in the countryside. The old ways are in fact not the best. When there was massive crop failure he needed to kill a few million so he could feed the rest. He had initially come to power by being funded by the US government who wished to take revenge on the Cambodian government who had not backed them in their war against Vietnam. The communist government of Vietnam eventually invaded Cambodia to save the people from "the ignorant culchie way of life is the best" madness.

Castro is not famous for any massacre. Augusto Pinochet would be though. But you're not going to mention him, because it's good when one of ye're boys does it. Franco has been accused of murdering possibly 1.2 million people, which puts him much further ahead than Stalin by comparison.

Permabear · 28-09-2014 11:13pm

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jank · 30-09-2014 3:52am

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

. Irish nuns probably killed more people proportionally to Stalin in Russian,

Its official! Nuns worse than Hitler or Stalin! :rolleyes:

Labarbapostiza · 30-09-2014 8:43pm

Permabear wrote: »

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I believe, even you have a strong suspicion that the Holodomor of 30-33, in the Ukraine, had as much to do with communism and collectivisation, as the current conflict in the Ukraine does today. What appears to have happened, though no one may ever know for sure, is that the Ukrainian Communist Party, (or more ethnic Russian Ukrainians, in positions of power) used food confiscation and other expropriations in a deliberate effort to starve the ethnic Ukrainians to death.

Russians were not fully aware of what was really happening until towards the end. Why or how could that be? You had to remember they had their own propaganda, which was nonsense, as well as anti-communist propaganda, which was also mostly nonsense, and the Ukrainian communist party telling them everything was fine. Khrushchev was Ukrainian, he didn't learn that many of the people he knew had died until he returned to the Ukraine at the end.

It was never Stalin's plan to wipe out ethnicities like the Ukrainian-Ukrainians. The ultimate aim was the Russofication of all ethnicities throughout the empire. But by forcibly deporting groups, and scattering them, with the intention they would lose their ethnicity that way, and become Russians. There were just too many people for him to do so, but he did try. This again has nothing to do with Communism. The deportations were modelled on the virtually identical deportations under the Tsars. The serfs had always been moved around like cattle.

The western propaganda of the Holodomor was that it was the result of collectivisation and Communism. This was to scare away western populations from communism.

The danger of BS, is coming to the point where you can't distinguish your own BS from the truth, even the truth completely vanishes from everyone. The western public were fed a constant diet of propaganda that the communist project had been an absolute failure from the beginning, while the western elites all believed it had been a success. Ronald Reagan believed the Soviet union was on the verge of economic collapse, while many of his advisors were insisting it was more powerful than ever (they probably thought he was an idiot for believing their anti-communist propaganda)

He also observes that Stalin's collectivization policies were used as the
blueprint for the Maoist collectivization, which killed over 30 million.

Terror of collectivisation is one of the major tools of anti-communist propaganda. Because in the west most farms are owned by individuals. That if the communists came to power, they'd push all the farmers off their family land, an bulldoze their houses and ditches for the super farm. The farmers would lose their social status and have to work for Ryan Air wages on the super farm, while living with the tinkers in a nearby small town.

But this is not what happened in either Russia or China. In neither place did the peasants own the land. The vast wheat fields of the Ukraine had been created by the aristocrats.

To understand it another way. Imagine if at the end of the potato famine, some proto communists group came to power in Ireland, through the judicious use of extreme violence. They would seize the land of the English lords and their helpers and agents (traditionally Fine Gael families, rewarded for their duty to the crown). Now the land would be collectively owned The agricultural product now used for the enrichment of all Irish people. In comparison to the genocidal famine that had just occurred, while ships ladened with food left the county, would the collectivisors be heroes or villians.

Irish farmers are selective in the collectivism they like and don't like. They ganged up like Marxist thugs on entrepreneurs running small creameries to create the Coops. They demand protection from the free market; they don't want big capital coming in and creating efficient super farms. They demand their way of life be persevered, by collective funds. Yet, they come out with endless anti-collectivist clap trap. Talk about chips on shoulders.

But, the reality is. Countries do whatever their path leads them down. They can call it capitalism, communism, or democracy, or theocracy. The majority of people, especially the leaders, believe all of the ideologies to be nonsense.

PopePalpatine · 31-01-2015 12:03am

I was reading the thread in the main Politics forum about what the Ukrainian President had said (which has since become the main thread for discussing the Ukrainian conflict), and saw a post quoting an article about one of Putin's most vocal and ardent supporters, Aleksandr Dugin, calling for a "Eurasian empire".

So, I googled his name, and it turns out he's a fascist who despises what he terms "liberal values" promoted by the West, he's close to the Kremlin, he was one of the advocates for military action in Ukraine and his views seem to align with the Dark Enlightenment. I'm just wondering - could the "Dark Enlightenment" take hold in Putin's Russia?

jank · 31-01-2015 12:59am

To answer that one has to define what dark enlightenment is. Of course no one would equate Russia or even the Ukraine as West either.

The Dark Enlightenment

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