PartisanZ
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So Matt, you’ll be stepping forward to be a slaughterman when socialism comes. Or will you expect others to do it for you?
I’ll always be willing to do the dirty work in socialism.
I knew a few killers from when the meat market was in Glasgow’s Gallowgate and they were no less decent human beings than anyone else.
I cited some examples of what they were faced with in a previous post as the rate of exploitation increased.
Rab, Bobby, Mick, were lovely warm hearted guys who are no longer with us.
Those circumstances they faced will not apply when capitalism has ended.
It is still a load of bull.
The reason for cruelty in farming and meat trades is the profit motive and mass production, speed up targets and low pay, topped up by bonus payments for meeting targets.
We can’t all keep chickens,pigs etc in our backyards or close by. But local slaughter yards were deemed unfit for purpose, with justification in many cases, (citing welfare of animals but actually profit driven).
Ending capitalism ends all of those conditions.
This from 1926 is still appropriate today.
You are not a little behind the chimp/bonobo curve.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190430091846.htm
Whether we save the biosphere may or may not be possible, but we can’t begin to try until socialism, which we have yet to establish.
So what are you banging on about then?
Talking about visitors. From June 1967.
1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages._________________________________________________I have moved a lot of these posts on onto the Marxist Animalism thread.Luckily we are not going extinct any time soon and are the only animal species capable of taking to steps to avoid extinction — and to prevent other species going extinct. This is something self-hating humans ignore.
You can’t say we are capable of postponing our extinction until we do, which will mean we could not have done otherwise.
As to avoiding extinction, we definitely will become extinct at some time. We can no more avoid that than we can stop stars from being born and dying.
Your species arrogance is your biggest failing.
So it’s arrogant of humans to want to establish socialism and so control their destiny (and that of other animals). What crap.
Of course humans can’t stop the sun imploding or exploding or whatever it’s going to do but how many millions of years away is that?
I was talking about any more immediate threat. Faced with the threat of extinction other animals can’t do anything about it. Humans can. And we, and only we, can do something to stop other animals from becoming extinct. I don’t know why you regard this as being “anthropocentric”. Other animals are better than humans in seeing, hearing, smelling and many other things but humans are better than them in thinking. That gives us the capacity to plan ahead and to control our environment rather than being entirely controlled by it. That is a fact of biology.
Humans are the only consciously-acting life-form that has happened to have evolved. This doesn’t give humans a right to dominate or be cruel to other animals, though of course we have to consume some other life-forms even if only plants to survive. In fact, if you want to go all philosophical, it means that only humans can save the biosphere. Even you accept in practice that only humans are capable of enforcing the “animal rights” you want respected. Otherwise why carry out a campaign amongst your fellow humans to get them to do this? It might help convince them if you didn’t keep on running down humans.
It seems to me a big supposition that a species barely one million years old will still be the species it is now when the sun implodes. A bit of humility seems required here! One million years ago your ancestors were not homo sapiens sapiens, and it isn’t likely that your descendants will be, several million years hence.
“Better” is subjective, because you exist within your own species-specific thinking. We do plan and change our environment. So do many other animals. They project, as we do, in performing tasks essential to them, as we do in what we feel to be essential for us. Other animals have even saved human lives. We have species-specific abilities too, but, like everything in nature, our wills are determined by both external and internal factors. For instance, the bourgeois apologist will say we are incapable of making socialism. You say we are capable. I say that we will only have been capable if we make socialism, and will have been incapable if we never do.
Humans are not the only consciously-acting life form. What arrogance, and ignorance! All animals are conscious.
You really should read more. Mark Bekoff. Jane Goodall. Modern ethology. Marx is for economics. He knew sod all about modern ethology and zoology.
“Rights” is a bourgeois term, as you know.
Yes, it is humans who must cease persecuting other animals, and the best surety of this is, apart from the abolition of capitalism, the recognition that all is one and interconnected, and that there is really no species barrier – that it is fluid and ever-changing, and that we are within nature, not above her.
I’m not running down humans; just deflating those with prejudices.
I fight equally against human-haters who blame things on “human nature.”
In your eagerness to do down the human species you are overlooking the difference in quality of human thinking compared with that of other animals. Of course other animals think and pursue goals but only humans are capable of abstract thinking ie of thinking of something in the absence of its perceived presence. Insofar as some animals might be able to do this in some rudimentary form the difference between what they can do and what humans can do is so great that the difference turns from one of quantity into one of quality.
Humans alone are capable of abstract thinking and of being able to think about thinking. I repeat this is a biological fact, a product of biological evolution. I don’t see why it is “anthropogenic” to accept this; in fact it’s denying this that is odd and open to question:
It would seem that our species is the only one conscious of itself as a species. We may well be a very rare, possibly unique, example of nature becoming conscious of itself.
It should migrate to “Marxist Animalism.”
So, finally, ALB, I am not eager to do down humans, just the arrogance which sees different species’ consciousness in terms of rank and contest, “better” and “inferior” – as though other animals are inferior steps on the way to us and not complete in themselves.
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The cat that lives with me has better sight and hearing than me so is superior to me in that respect. On the other hand, my capacity to think is better than hers and so I am superior in that respect. What’s wrong with stating these facts?
No point in migrating this discussion somewhere else as, the subject having been exhausted, I am prepared to drop it.
– Experts across Africa are warning that as hospitals and health facilities focus on COVID-19, less attention is being given to the management of other deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which affect millions more people.
“Today if you have malaria symptoms you are in big trouble because they are quite close to COVID-19 symptoms, will you go to the hospital when it is said we should not go there?” Yap Boum II, the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, told IPS.
“Hospitals are struggling because they do not have the good facilities and equipment; it will be hard to take in a patient with malaria because people are scared. As a result the management of malaria is affected by COVID-19,” Boum, who is also a Professor of Microbiology at Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology in Uganda, said, pointing out that HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were also being ignored.
In fact, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that four times as many people could die from malaria than coronavirus.
Keep this thread on topic specifically on the Coronavirus and any conspiracy stuff has been moved by me onto this thread.
These conspiracy theories, that a small group of people are secretly controlling the world and using its resources for their own benefit in an anti democratic and dictatorial manner, is a smokescreen for the fact that a small group of people (the capitalist class) are openly controlling the world and using its resources for their own benefit in an anti democratic and dictatorial manner.
And “conspiracy” is so much easier than thoughtful social analysis. Which is why, in 2020, there are countless more flat earthers than there are socialists.
One of the arguments I use when I talk to conspirancy theorists, is how will the conspirators they think control the earth continue to conspire in a moneyless world of common ownership? How will they bribe, corrupt and punish?
If the illumanti or the deep state or whatever bogey man they make up does exist, then only Socialism can get rid of them.
Perhaps we should use that as a slogan at the next election “vote Socialist and get rid of the Lizard People”, just an idea 🙁
“And back to conspiracy debunking, Ozy, from just a few sources but there are multiple.”
Those who have access to Facebook will have seen that the Plandemic video, which several individuals had succumbed to, including, sadly, some Party members, has been well and truly debunked.
Forget that, Bijou.
Conspiracism is a cult. One cannot rationalise with the extremely irrational. I know firsthand.
The conspiracist will say s/he KNOWS. Their speech is repetition of the guru’s they follow. They are incapable of thought outside the confines of their ideology.
It’s the same as arguing with evangelicals. Conspiracists are evangelicals, even if Christless. Which is why evangelicals so easily embrace conspiracism.
IDEOLOGY VS. PHILOSOPHY
<p dir=”ltr”>One can be brainwashed by minority, alternative, media too.
Cults are minorities. Some are very small.
The difference between brainwashing and thought is the difference between ideology and philosophy.
The ideologist adopts instantly the entire credo of a group because of an emotional / romantic / image-based need, or a need to belong.
This is what the “phases” of adolescents are, seeking belonging, or seduced by imagery.
It is true that most, having passed through this stage, and being working-class (99% of the world’s population are working class), have little time on their hands for thought beyond that of working for their living and struggling to raise families etc. Life under capitalism means it is convenient to rely on mainstream media, and hence be patriotic and trusting of whichever nation-state apparatus governs them and the news it puts out.
Minorities, some small, some large, will seek belonging, still, in groups and cults which, demonstrating some “rebelliousness” or “difference” from “the herd” give them the sense of belonging through difference. Such are converts to religions, racist groups, anything that has a leader or pundit to follow, and by following, belong. For some, the more outrageous and the more reviled, the better.
All these are <i>ideology</i>.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Philosophy, however, is very different from ideology.
The philosopher does not accept the entirety of someone else’s thought, nor reject that entirety, on the basis of agreement or disagreement in one or two particulars. A philosopher does not require leaders to follow. S/he does not wish to lead. S/he is not interested in imagery. S/he doesn’t care about belonging to anything. S/he may be mistaken in things, but cannot be brainwashed. There is no danger for the philosopher in listening to or watching or reading <i>any</i> media or propaganda.
S/he is not susceptible to brainwashing, neither by the state nor by any cult, neither by the majority nor any minority.
The only way to damage the philosopher is to physically do so, by violence applied to the brain.
The philosopher <i>sifts</i> information in the light of views – philosophy – developed through the course of their lifetime. This is why philosophers usually disagree about most things. If s/he joins a group it is not to find belonging; it is not because of any need to be in a group. It is purely because of a shared interest.
The philosopher does not <i>abdicate</i> his/her thought in order to <i>be part of</i> a group or party.</p><b>Conspiracy theorist</b><i> </i>or<b> </b><b>conspiracist</b>, <i>n.</i>
See GULLIBLE.
A person lacking in personal reserves of wisdom and with no capacity for discernment or intellectual discipline, who rejects all received knowledge on the basis that everything is a conspiracy against him/her and others. Ironically, while claiming all received knowledge and book-learning to be a conspiracy, the conspiracist voraciously absorbs and believes, without any discernment, any and every outlandish and mystical charlatanry going – as long as it rejects received knowledge and wisdom. When challenged, the conspiracist will opt for nihilism – denying that any of us can ever know anything – whilst simultaneously, like the religious fundamentalist, claiming that s/he<i>does </i>know. The conspiracist is an absolutist. A genuine thinker, historian or scientist need have one fault, be wrong about one fact, or say one thing questionable, and the conspiracist will seize on it as “proof” we should reject the former’s entire corpus. Whilst proudly proclaiming his/her individuality and rejecting all received knowledge, the conspiracist is the most enthralled by the self-appointed gurus whose statements s/he repeats, and presents as personal conclusions. The digital phenomenon has been a godsend to the charlatans who sow conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and pseudohistory. The gullible these depend on are the conspiracy theoristsThe application of the new technology has enabled me to converse and interact face to face with comrades in the USA and Thailand and friends in Australia dispersed due to global capitalism.
A boon for me personally, as I lipread and can follow visual clues when I mishear. The recent take up of it by our EC has enabled socialist activity to continue despite the present lock down, on the Discord app.
We are now able to digitally access all of Marx’s published works on Marxists .org and place much of our important contributions on the same platform.
I feel more connected with comrades now than hitherto and long may these technological fixes continue.
Both at the same time. I really can’t be arsed with nit picking arguments over someone’s throw away remark in a thread about coronavirus.
it is a matter of cultural acclimatisation. When monkeys are capable of building bicycles as well as riding them, they may be fascinated by the switch pulling outcomes.
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