An Emergent Order

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thirdform

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version said:
Is this some Posadist thing?
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The Posadists were an apocalyptic cult with absurd ideas about nuclear war and comradeship with dolphins, but their party line on aliens was pretty sound.

In this one respect, the Posadists’ view overlapped with that of Carl Sagan, the American cosmologist who helped provide a scientific rationale for the belief that our galaxy is full of advanced civilizations. (He guessed somewhere between 50,000 and 1 million.) Sagan’s estimate was based on his assumptions about the Drake equation, which multiplies the number of planets that can sustain life (R* · ƒp · ne · ƒl) by the likelihood that intelligent life is able to signal its existence across space (ƒi · ƒc) and the length of time these civilizations can send such detectable signals (L) to arrive at the number of civilizations that are capable of interplanetary messaging (N). We have one data point for N: humanity.
 
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Clinamenic said:
Its interesting because all three of the competing world orders of the twentieth century (liberalism, marxism, fascism) are teleological. Almost feels like non-teleological modes tend to find equilibrium only at more parochial scales, rather than "world orders" as such.
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Anything like that seems to me to be be in opposition to materialism. I'd have thought materialism would lead you to an open-ended view of the future as you just deal with the concrete, with what's actually happening around you, and try your best to work out where things might lead. That's why I have less of an issue with a history book like the Mike Davis one I read recently which focuses on specific events than a history book which tries to craft a sweeping narrative or carve out a period.
 
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thirdform

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version said:
Anything like that seems to me to be be in opposition to materialism. I'd have thought materialism would lead you to an open-ended view of the future as you just deal with the concrete, with what's actually happening around you, and try your best to work out where things might lead. That's why I have less of an issue with a history book like the Mike Davis one I read recently which focuses on specific events than a history book which tries to craft a sweeping narrative or carve out a period.
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that's crude materialism.

Proper dialectical materialism reverses this to say that you try to work out the past, not the future, precisely because the future is already happening.

in this sense, the preconditions for communism are already here, have already been here, and will continue to be here. Whether communism will win is irrelevant (it has to whether that be 1917, 2050 or 2200) because its elements and potentialities are already extant, barring planetary annihilation.
 
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thirdform

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it is actually anarchism which shares more with liberal and fascist teleologies but @Clinamenic is a foolish intellectual who needs to be sent down the pits. anarchists want to decentralise, make society smaller, counteract globalisation. Communists are more globalist than capitalists, more cosmopolitan, more gender abolitionist than @mixed_biscuits delightfully progressive friends, because only we have the capability to realise bourgeois demands on the way to their abolition.
 
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thirdform

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europe is losing its cultural identity? good.

marriage is no longer meaningful? how based.

women don't want to be protected by male legislators and radical feminist hags and side with those who problematise womanhood? even better!

Artificial wombs could displace biological incubation and establish a world matrix? Utterly brilliant!
 
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version

Well-known member
thirdform said:
that's crude materialism.

Proper dialectical materialism reverses this to say that you try to work out the past, not the future, precisely because the future is already happening.

in this sense, the preconditions for communism are already here, have already been here, and will continue to be here. Whether communism will win is irrelevant (it has to whether that be 1917, 2050 or 2200) because its elements and potentialities are already extant, barring planetary annihilation.
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Why would you need to work out the past if the future's happening anyway and why does communism have to win?
 
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thirdform

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version said:
Why would you need to work out the past if the future's happening anyway and why does communism have to win?
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Because working out is inherently a retroactive act. did you smoke too much skunk this weekend? You used to be far more agile. something has crept into your constitution.

Communism has to win because it is (as a material tendancy) already being created in front of our eyes. Concentration and socialisation of labour, suppression of the freedom of the producer and her freeing from the land, the disintegration of previously organic local communities, money serving increasingly more and more as *token* money as an indication of the states commodity-gold reserves, the state undertaking the management of production as the collective capitalist, the coronation of the world market and international organisations for managing intercontinental economic activity, etc. It's not a projected vision of the future, it is the future, but whether we can hasten it rapidly or whether it will take time depends on the pitch of the struggle to the death and the political wars resulting therein.
 
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version

Well-known member
thirdform said:
Because working out is inherently a retroactive act. did you smoke too much skunk this weekend? You used to be far more agile. something has crept into your constitution.

Communism has to win because it is (as a material tendancy) already being created in front of our eyes. Concentration and socialisation of labour, suppression of the freedom of the producer and her freeing from the land, the disintegration of previously organic local communities, money serving increasingly more and more as *token* money as an indication of the states commodity-gold reserves, the state undertaking the management of production as the collective capitalist, the coronation of the world market and international organisations for managing intercontinental economic activity, etc. It's not a projected vision of the future, it is the future, but whether we can hasten it rapidly or whether it will take time depends on the pitch of the struggle to the death and the political wars resulting therein.
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This feels like the looping logic you were accusing postmodernism of. "It has to win because it's already being created," comes off like Nick Land's going on about capital sending itself back from the future to assemble itself.

Surely anything we say about the future is a projected vision because it hasn't happened yet? How can we say anything definitely happens in the future?
 
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thirdform

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version said:
This feels like the looping logic you were accusing postmodernism of. "It has to win because it's already being created," comes off like Nick Land's going on about capital sending itself back from the future to assemble itself.

Surely anything we say about the future is a projected vision because it hasn't happened yet? How can we say anything definitely happens in the future?
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I did actually say there is a sense in which it can't happen, planetary annihilation. I am open to that possibility, albeit termination of the species is something nick land ultimately propounds, and I don't. that's where the struggle comes in, but you want to be agnostic as it means you are spared from committing.
 
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version

Well-known member
thirdform said:
I did actually say there is a sense in which it can't happen, planetary annihilation. I am open to that possibility, albeit termination of the species is something nick land ultimately propounds, and I don't. that's where the struggle comes in, but you want to be agnostic as it means you are spared from committing.
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You admit it's something you commit to, i.e. choose to believe, rather than an inevitability then? Just seems mad to me to say communism is going to happen and the only thing that will prevent it happening is the end of the world.
 
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thirdform

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also nick land can only say capital comes from the future to reassemble itself because he discounts the class struggle entirely. Our postulate is the opposite, that at any given time, the working class engages with capitalism at its most advanced level.
 
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thirdform

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version said:
You admit it's something you commit to, i.e. choose to believe, rather than an inevitability then? Just seems mad to me to say communism is going to happen and the only thing that will prevent it happening is the end of the world.
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It is inevitable if the human species is not terminated. Whether I believe or don't believe it is irrelevant. I could believe in kiyammah for all it's worth and that wouldn't change anything in the arguments I have made, which are not personal.

My commitment is political, yes.

Deep down, you actually commit to the existing order (like most leftists) by the justification of committing to nothing. This is what Zizek means when he says that ideology can account for its own criticisms. Of course, Ziz himself does not pursue his thinking on this subject to its logical limit, because for him the homology of Lacan is with Hegel, when in fact it is with Marx.

For him, the idea that the big other doesn't exist means we should find a new form of alienation to replace it, that being a form of some kind of social democratic state v2.0. Whereas to say that one cannot be identical with itself is to say that we should not look to replace the nonexistent big other.
 
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I'm curious about Lyotard's position of being an anti-communist socialist. Isn't socialism supposed to be a stage on the path to communism? Did he think the process could just be arrested at socialism and never move beyond it? Apparently he even thought capitalism was preferable to communism.
 
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thirdform said:
It is inevitable if the human species is not terminated. Whether I believe or don't believe it is irrelevant. I could believe in kiyammah for all it's worth and that wouldn't change anything in the arguments I have made, which are not personal.
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This sounds like religion to me. You're talking about communism the way others talk about the rapture.
 
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