When is a red line more of a grey area?

[FireIceTalon]

@FireIceTalon

A very well thought out reply to my obvious eccentric and confrontational rantings; I respect that greatly. I don't feel like I have a "hot temper" so to speak, but when provoked in a way I perceive as threatening, I becomes immediately enraged to the point I feel all logic and fear flee my body and all I see is red and my objectives become very clear. But it takes quite a bit to get me to that point. I might take this opportunity to point out that as a manager, I respect all my employees greatly and I always "ask" them to do things that need to get done; I never bark orders at them unless it's dire so when I do "order" them around, they know it's serious; I respect them and they respect me and I've been told that many times. I'd like to take a moment to point out that the hulk1 only comes out when I feel personally threatened in a way that will cause myself or someone I love bodily harm, not just because I don't feel listened to, disrespected, or something mundane like that.

As for my choice of words, yeah, perhaps it is a bit of brainwashing - when the incredible hulk1 takes over, the reactionary bit comes out (such as how you "react" when performing martial arts as opposed to thinking your moves out) and I learned that from where? Well, I don't really know; it feels like a kind of self-defense mechanism to me (the hulk bit), and then my whole way of thinking changes but where did I learn to use that choice of words? I suppose you make a truly excellent point there. I'll have to give this some more thought.... Obviously I was not enraged when I wrote that, but I was putting myself in the mindset by imagining myself in Obama's shoes and thinking what I'd do if I were him and, well you get the picture... Damn FIT, you really got me thinking here, lol. Why do you believe it's "capitalist social relations" that has got me thinking this way as opposed to something else? I mean, it's easy to blame a capitalist society when every form of media you can get your hands on reference money, greed, and power, but I'd argue these emotions are intrinsic to even the most noble of thinkers and that capitalism has nothing to do with it. I'm going to have to give this more thought.

1 - I'm using "the Hulk" references here as a metaphor for extreme anger only because it's a fun way to lift the mood and is equally fitting to this thread.

What else could it be, hehe? My thoughts on human nature have been stated before but I think it's worth a repeat just to drive my point home: our nature is not a innate and static concept that remains unchanged over time - it is a reflection of current material conditions, and is dynamic in that it changes when said material conditions also change. As a result, cultural stereotypes and the very language we use have plenty of vestiges of capitalist social relations. Money, greed and power do develop as social constructs from the existence and operations of class oppression and alienation, but they are hardly a naturally occurring phenomena that is intrinsic to the human essence. It doesn't even have to be capitalism necessarily, it can be ANY class based system. The reason I mention capitalism is because that is the current system in which we live, and therefore the most relevant one to critique. It is true that some forms of reactionary thought pre-date the capitalist mode of production, in particular gender inequalities and discrimination of women were around long before capitalism was. Nevertheless, capitalism does a splendid job at perpetuating this relationship (even if it takes a different form than in prior economic systems).

Most (though not all) types of social estrangement and stereotypes of today are unique to capitalism, and even those that aren't certainly operate differently than they did in other class based systems. If you compare the class system of the Roman Republic for instance, which was predominantly a slave society, there wasn't a system of institutional racism (that I know of anyways) in its class structures. The reason is because it wasn't a necessary process for that particular mode of production - the class you were born into was pretty much the class you were forever regardless of your skin color. A slave was a slave, race did not matter. Capitalism works differently. Unlike slave society, where people themselves were the property, capitalism is private ownership of the means of production and societies resources. Divisions of labor and ideology are useful for keeping the working class divided and in competition with one another, and so workers become alienated from both one another and from the commodities that their labor produces. Labor itself is commodified, also. Capitalists, although much better off than workers, are also alienated from their true nature in their endless pursuit for more power, profit and social prestige, and because they compete with one another, this requires at some point more exploitation of the working class (such as reduction of wages) which typically effects workers that are already worse off to begin with (minorities, women, etc) because of the labor divisions. Basically, you cannot have capitalism without a racial caste system - it is materially impossible. Capitalism therefore, by its very nature, is a racist system - I know this sounds reductionist but it has historically and scientifically been proven as fact.

You say the media is responsible for these problems, but the media itself is part of the capitalist system...and in fact, it is a tool within it used for promoting capitalist ideologies and agendas. Critical thinking in a bourgeois-liberal framework is undermined from the get go, because the moment you critique the capitalist system, you are shunned in some way and all critical thinking at that point must stop. I think most people in general mean well and would like to see things like racism, war, poverty, and all the other horrible things we see, gone. But most of their ideas are utopian or idealistic in nature (this is particularly true of 'liberals', social-democrats, and libertarians) - you can't get rid of these things without destroying capitalism, or any system of class antagonisms for that matter, first. A big reason for the shortcomings of non-Marxist interpretations is the fact they view these problems to exist in a vacuum and independent of one another, instead of them being inextricably linked to capitalism's processes. Thus, their solutions, while perhaps well intended, simply just end up perpetuating the problems instead of fixing them. These are not problems that can be fixed by superficial solutions independent of one another (which is why 'The War on x problem' approach is completely useless), they are all intertwined in a large, complicated historical context and process.

This is where Marxism comes in, because it teaches critical thinking in an entirely different way: through the use of dialectical thinking. To better understand how our very thinking, culture and behavior is shaped by the prevailing social relations and its agencies, you could look at Marx's concept of society by examining two components that he called Base and Superstructure. Gramsci's concept of Cultural Hegemony and Lous Althusser's "Ideological State Apparatus are very interesting as well, I think these would be useful for you in better understanding many of my posts in these sort of topics.

Trust me, I don't critique this system just for the hell of it or to try and troll, I do it because a lot of how we think may seem like it is from some abstract source, but it really isnt and thats what im pointing out. I myself, even as a Marxist, still have bourgeois influence on me, because like you, I also have been raised in a capitalist society, so naturally I am going to have some reflections of it. I went through a number of political phases in my life but when I discovered Marxism it just made the most sense to me, primarily because it is a materialist explanation and analysis of history and social development, instead of an idealist one like most others. The only difference is that I am more aware of it than most, and I try to shed and distance myself from reactionary influences. For the most part I have been pretty successful but every now and then I may say or do something that might make a fellow comrade cringe, but I try not to It certainly is not an easy cycle to break or overcome because everywhere you go there is capitalist and reactionary ideology all around you, and there is plenty of anti-Marxist dogma to go along with it.

In short, capitalism has everything to do with it. Don't take my previous post too personally, because it is nothing against you as a person. Do I think you are brainwashed a bit? To be brutally honest, yes (though I have seen much worse). But at the same time, it isn't really your fault. All the agencies and institutions in our society have a very specific agenda to promote and uphold, so it is very very easy to be mislead, unfortunately. We've had decades (centuries?) of capitalist propaganda pounded into our heads from even a very young age, and have been told this system is good for everyone and there are no viable alternatives. So many just blindly accept it, and all the problems that come along with it. The good news is, is that you CAN break away from it, even if doing so is very difficult. The first thing I did, and this was even before I became a full-fledged Marxist, was reducing the amount of mainstream media from my news diet. Now I avoid it like cancer, even though as I stated before, I probably still have small vestiges of bourgeois thought. I certainly make a conscious effort not to, though.