Itt guess whose sock The Sniper is

Squirrel Police

aren't we all the sniper, really?

I'm the sniper

Don't believe me? Watch this

Gentlemen, what you pansies are are a bunch of starving artistes who live off the kindness of the American government or mommy and daddy. You are angry at your own failings and struggle for survival, mock the GOP and ridicule its members, but when Republicans do it to the Democrats and you, you call out racism and class warfare.

You all yammer on like you do, but let me tell you this here message board is one kooky place with as many double standards as the Grand Old Party, which is why I voted TRUMP!

dom p. obv

Could Jay Batman be back

fuck socks

Ooh ooh I kno it's long-time poster Liam O'Flaherty

except for the booty cleaner

xp

Whatever else we do, we should definitely empty this entire 50 lb. bag of troll chow onto the back porch. He seems like a hungry lil guy, what's the harm.

the sniper has been a valuable poster on ILX for several years now

It would be nice to have a conservative around here who was willing to debate and (attempt to) explain fundamental tenets rather than lob some "lol u r all beta cucks, u suck, quit spending my tax $$$ and kill urself" squibs until getting banned. But I doubt Herr Sniper is that poster.

"lol u r all beta cucks, u suck, quit spending my tax $$$ and kill urself

tbf this is what conservatism is now

there are no "fundamental tenets"

Yeah but it's instructive/fun when they try.

Gimme a minute, I'll go over and ask a few people from Quora to sign up here

nabisco :)

i think it's fun, he should stick around a bit

It would be nice to have a conservative around here who was willing to debate and (attempt to) explain fundamental tenets rather than lob some "lol u r all beta cucks, u suck, quit spending my tax $$$ and kill urself" squibs until getting banned. But I doubt Herr Sniper is that poster.

― Cannibal Adderley (WilliamC), Monday, 10 July 2017 17:04 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rather akin to claiming you'd like a sparring ring at your gym when everyone knows you want a punchbag

That's the wider 'you' not specifically at yrself, but yknow.......ilx does not want this type of dissent and ilx will rid itself of this type of dissent regardless of how it is presented

Otm

you don't need a gung ho conservative either. if you want to engage with conservative ideas make a thread and call it "this thread is for good/reasonable conservative ideas & articles only" and then post stuff you find for discussion. there's plenty of good stuff out there. start a reading club on burke or schmitt. discuss hobbes or augustine or macintyre or whoever you think makes compelling cases for their ideas even tho you cannot ultimately sign on. if you literally cannot find a single intelligent or intelligible conservative writer/philosophy/politician consider that this is a flaw in yr own capacity for ideological diversity and not a failing in a millennia long historical political project.

Counterpoint: American conservatives are universally shitty, worthless people and fuck them all.

it's v hard to understand why intelligent thoughtful conservatives don't post here don't they know how awesome we are

Conservative tastes in music don't lead here.

I have reservations about trial lawyers and identity politics, but I'm still a long way from conservative. I think I found this place originally doing a search on "Killing Joke".

NB tbf I'm not even positing that there exists an adequate proponent for the shittiness of the current strain of American right currently in effect just saying that if there were they would not have any place on ilx except as an object to be converted else pilloried, not as someone to be engaged with in any curious or meaningful way.

^very honest post

ILXOR is not a place for conservatives it is barely a place for leftists. all roads lead to the centrist liberal company line here.

Intelligent thoughtful conservatives don't post here because unicorn hooves are too large for QWERTY keyboards.

Sanpaku OTM about finding the place to start with.

Eh, there's a higher percentage of leftists here than any forum I've seen not specifically dedicated to leftist politics.

but let's be honest we have a lot more leftists and liberals leaning left than we have anything close to center-right. when we poll things like capitalism there's some tepid defense of it but overwhelming ilx is critical.

xxp to adam

ILXOR is not a place for conservatives it is barely a place for leftists. all roads lead to the centrist liberal company line here.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Struggle_session_poster_1.jpg

TL:DM

Conservatism is the wrong word, let's say reactionaries, and there will always be reactionaries and they will always be on the wrong side of glorious revolution.

Also, darragh is the sniper, right? Lawyers within lawyers.

Ha. Nope I have never had a sock, in general I'm against them but there have been some amusing ones

im just glad we are having yet another conversation about discrediting an internet poster rather than discussing an actual topic of interest

Conservative tastes in music don't lead here.

― полезные дурак (Sanpaku), Monday, July 10, 2017 10:14 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I don't think that this is true at all, e.g. there are three threads about Genesis albums in sna at the moment (NB I like Genesis)

Talking of actual topics of interest.

Three threads on genesis, four on revelations and a poll about the psalms

four on revelations

Too much, it's one of Killing Joke's less impressive albums. Why is there a thread on some who's posted once?

... sorry, four times.

Psalm number 9 is clearly the big hit, right?

29 is the earlier work iirc therefore ilx disdains all else

watching too many conspiracy tv news stories has fucked everyone's minds. having a genuine discussion with somebody is impossible. everyone is trained for paranoia.

im just glad we are having yet another conversation about discrediting an internet poster rather than discussing an actual topic of interest

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Monday, July 10, 2017 5:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're like the dude who loudly proclaims "Y'KNOW FRANKENSTEIN IS VICTOR'S SURNAME NOT THE MONSTER'S NAME" at every party

22 is one of those that should really be read at funerals:

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? 2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. 3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. 4 In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. 8 “He trusts in the LORD,” they say, “let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” 9 Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. 10 From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. 12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. 13 Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me.

oh man I am so sick of THAT guy, what a super relatable analogy

oh cool you're here too.

did I miss where somebody said something about Islam, I don't think your batsignal went off yet

I'm a churchsinger so I sing at funerals a lot, and I think about good and bad funerals, and a while back it hit me that if I was dying I probably wouldn't plan a good and nice funeral, I would probably be so pissed and angry that I would want everyone else to suffer a bit just as I was suffering by dying and all that, so I'd probably want the priest to read, like, the darkest psalms, and a whole lot of the book of Job. And for music, a bit of Beatles. But not, like, Let It Be or Imagine or something like that, Obladi Oblada or Yellow Submarine or something, something to really make the mourners feel the wrongness of it all.

For my dad's funeral one of the songs I picked was "Take Five" (he was an enormous Dave Brubeck fan) but the funeral home didn't download the original album version - so I accidentally subjected a bunch of people who probably hadn't ever listened to jazz to a 12-minute live version. Oops.

I'm requesting the full 25-minute "Bitches Brew" and "Sister Ray" in my will.

Will funeral parlors install an amplified dripping faucet for a wake?

i like to sing songs by the three original beatles at funerals

"I Saw Her Lying There"?

My politics run to the leftish side of liberal so I fit in well here but I think it's crazy that there are people who wouldn't welcome more people with different kinds of ideas. We're getting stale y'all.

I am sure The Sniper had lots to offer

And Sniper is not that person but still, Adam's perspective that this place is an echo chamber shouldn't be mocked.

"day sniper" mostly

xpost

I'd welcome more radical leftists too. Anarchists, whatever. Anyone who has a solid grasp on the political tradition they choose to embrace would be an interesting addition to the
boards.

I do plenty of sniping with actual conservatives on most days. Don't come here to contimur

(Barring anything hateful or bigoted in principle)

Yeah that's different. I probably haven't talked to a conservative about politics in three years.

Xp

talking politics with a conservative is like to talking music with someone who only listens to dave matthews

Adam is not getting mocked for saying this place is an echo chamber.

ILXOR is not a place for conservatives it is barely a place for leftists. all roads lead to the centrist liberal company line here.

nah this board was og leftist (ur just one of the dumbest current left posters) if often in a cult studs way. mark s, nrq, julio, dom p all smart britisher commies iirc; some really good old Tim F and nabisco posts about Zizek; even momus... and 90s early 00s was nadir of leftism. and i mean gawker is tightly intertwined w the whole chapo/left twitter ideology. hoos and laurel and others are or were actual community organizers... ilx is of the left

Neanderthal mocked him for saying that

Also tbf I distinguish "conservatism" as an intellectual tendency from the modern GOP, who I view as being basically a scam.

My politics run to the leftish side of liberal so I fit in well here but I think it's crazy that there are people who wouldn't welcome more people with different kinds of ideas. We're getting stale y'all.

― Treeship, Monday, July 10, 2017 10:46 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'We' keep saying this, but every "conservative" that is unfortunate enough to run into this board either leaves disenchanted or racks up to 51 faster than you can say 'alt-right'. Deems otm.

Neanderthal mocked him for saying that

― Treeship, 11. juli 2017 00:56 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Where? I'm sure it's a delightfully punny subtext to what he wrote that I'm just to thick to get without your guidance.

absence of conservatives on ilx is a good thing imo. some degree of ideological conformity is necessary for the chill, chatty discussion style here. plenty of places on reddit u can go to practice talking to actual conservatives

tbh i'd probably rather talk to a conservative than another fuckin' anarchist

Social Democrats. Fuckin Goldman Sachs loving sellouts.

I'm still annoyed nobody got my joke on the 100 made up euphemisms for semen thread

I'll tell you what we need more of here: outright Marxists and Trotskyites.

Tombot what was the joke? :(

Also, just to take it down a notch, people are shitting on the sniper because it seems really obvious that he is a sock, right? Ran into several threads at once, even tried to hijack a film thread to shout about Trump. It's, what's his name, Raccoon Tanuki all over again, right? And it's the same joke told a forth time, so it's just not that funny anymore.

I think I'm a Trotskyite, although I'm not entirely sure what the term means. Perpetual revolution, that sort of thing?

I don't disagree with Mordy's POX Classix of Conservatism thread idea though

If you're a Trotskyite you sure as hell wouldn't want to be (called) a Marxist. Take it from there and see where it leads you.

Mordy's idea is good. A ~safe space~ on ilx for conservatives.

LBI here is an hint

lol I don't think that this is true at all, e.g. there are three threads about Genesis albums in sna at the moment (NB I like Genesis)

I'm not even positing that there exists an adequate proponent for the shittiness of the current strain of American right currently in effect just saying that if there were they would not have any place on ilx except as an object to be converted else pilloried, not as someone to be engaged with in any curious or meaningful way.

This sounds about right. However, any such proponent who confined himself or herself to repeating the talking points readily supplied by the spokepeople of the currently strain of American conservatism would not be presenting ilx with any value that could not be as readily supplied from the original fountainheads of such talking points.

The real person behind those posts could be fruitfully engaged only upon the level of their humanity, via discovering the path by which they arrived at their system of politics. Not every one of those paths would be interesting. Many conservatives simply imbibed conservatism with their mother's milk and never seriously considered any alternative reality to that which they received and swallowed whole. Others would have more interesting stories to tell.

But they'd have to be willing to shuck the protective covering of conventional conservative polemics and reveal themselves. Else, why bother?

i like to sing songs by the three original beatles at funerals

― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 10 July 2017 22:37 (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I Saw Her Lying There"?

― Charles "Butt" Stanton (Neanderthal), Monday, 10 July 2017 22:44 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Solid work here mayne

XP all could be said of any pov but I disagree that an engaged poster doesn't bring more than the talking head value

LBI here is an hint

Oh god... Yr joke deserves more praise.

'An hint' is a keeper though. Could possible be applied to that thread, too.

Fred prob correct that snipes is being dismissed as ungenuine out of hand. If there seemed a chance that they were genuine the vitriol would be personal and much worse

True, but crashing in here - crashing in anywhere - as Mr. Kool Aid and telling all to go fuck ourselves prob not the best strategy. Nor here, nor anywhere else. Hence: sock.

If you're a Trotskyite you sure as hell wouldn't want to be (called) a Marxist. Take it from there and see where it leads you.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, July 10, 2017 4:09 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not my experience with trotskyites

Just delighted to be called amirite

ime trotskyites are marxists trying to get away from the whole embarrassing failure of soviet communism + its descent into stalinism

Trotsky was a Marxist.

a conservative wouldn't necessarily defend every aspect of the contemporary Republican Party, same way we criticize aspects of Obama/Clinton we think fall short

otm

ime trotskyites are marxists trying to get away from the whole embarrassing failure of soviet communism + its descent into stalinism

― Mordy, Monday, July 10, 2017 11:34 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Trenchant but true. Trotskyites went all in for permanent revolution, whereas Marx preached revolution step by step. Including industrialization, letting the workers enter that system first to overthrow/own it later. Trotsky would have none of that. Revolution at 'home' was just the beginning for him, the first step. And the liberation of the working class didn't end at the border; they had to continue abroad, ideally.
Marx was about fighting in, Trotsky was about overthrowing.

Trotsky was a Marxist.

― Treeship, Monday, July 10, 2017 11:34 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cute, but no.

We've come quite a long way here on a 'guess the sock' thread. That, The Sniper, I will hand to you.

as i said i don't think there should be conservatives on ilx (the discourse here is more about snarky potshots at the right and can maintain some level of intraleft bickering, but presence of Actual Conservatives would just lead to huffy clusterfucks ruining every thread) but it is imo a good practice to find one or two conservative-ish writers you don't hate, just to not let yourself fall into believing they're all hicks and monsters as many on the 'explaining conservatism' thread clearly do. i mean, or don't and just continue to believe that, it doesn't really matter

that trotsky stuff makes no sense

Marx was internationalist, for one

Never did xp

flopson otm xxp

The Bolsheviks in general wanted to jump over the "first step" of bourgeois revolution in Russia, but that doesn't mean they didn't find it problematic. Also Marx never believed in "socialism in one country" -- when Trotsky characterized Stalin's doctrine that way he was saying that he betrayed the Marxist principle of internationalism.

I've sometimes used "Trotskyite" as shorthand for the idea that the worse things get, the better it is (because it makes the pendulum swing more inevitable).

Not sure whether that's authentically Trotskyism or not; somewhere along the line I picked that up.

remember also trotsky was pro NEP which means he knew when to compromise on his values. stalin was far more gung ho about pushing the revolution to its actual limits.

Trots certainly consider Marx in their ideological lineage, yeesh.

Ofcourse they do Milo, don't think anyone's denying that, but this started out being about the significant difference between the two, not the shared lineage or ideals. And the differences are real.

By the time people were calling themselves "Trotskyists" there were many groups fighting over who was the true heir to Marx. There was no agreement about who the "true Marxists" were

apparently trots had the better parties

Being a conservative in 2017 is a bit like being a communist in 1991. Or perhaps more like 1956. I mean, you can do it, but you have a whole lot of explaining to do. The GOP isn't just being a bit off, the way Obama and Clinton wasn't really real leftists all the time, it's been taken over by a bunch of incompetent bigots, and the obvious conclusion is that it has to do with a weakness inherent to conservatism. And again, you can argue that is wrong. But it's not an easy argument.

To the end Trotsky believed that Stalin had betrayed the revolution's Marxist-Leninist principles. He believed his own ideas -- including his emphasis on internationalism -- were closer to those principles.

It's true that Trotsky was an innovator of Marxist doctrine but he is very much a figure in the Marxist tradition.

apparently trots had the better parties

well sure frida kahlo was in attendance

i don't really get the whole internationalist thing tbh. capitalism worked in one country (britain) before it worked in any other, or went global. why does socialism need to be in every country?

maybe bc communism is a utopian post-historical condition of humanity? there's also the problem of international trade - is the socialist state being forced to undermine its own ideology in order to participate in global trade? it seems like a fatal contradiction.

Because if socialism is morally right, it follows that you should work for it everywhere. Also, if class is most significant identity marker, you need it to matter across borders. Also, I question your history of capitalism, which leaves out globalist mercantilism as a precursor.

so just be an autarky at first

also i think maybe the state itself is an anachronism under communism - borders primarily make sense in a context of private ownership but once you're talking about totalizing absolute universalism it can't very well stop at the border.

"when the State has withered away..."

well some communist countries did try autarky but it's v hard. it limits growth and ppl envy higher standards of living. it's hard to sell an ideology that isn't delivering as good results

if you define capitalism generally enough you can easily end up with a definition such that it has existed for most/all of history, which is not useful. so start with Britain circa industrial revolution

i get why if you like socialism you would like it in all countries. but the internationalist argument is that it *needs* to be in all countries *in order to work*. i like turkey sandwiches, but i don't require everyone else in the world to be eating a turkey sandwich for me to fully enjoy it. why is socialism different?

it's hard to sell an ideology that isn't delivering as good results

Um, hate to break it to you, but...

lol that the state would wither away

but...? xp

i don't really get the whole internationalist thing tbh. capitalism worked in one country (britain) before it worked in any other, or went global. why does socialism need to be in every country?

In part I'd guess because the imperialists and capitalists will move to ruthlessly crush socialism in single countries.

This really is turning into a classic CFT. I'm proud of everyone and I've learned a lot

Ofcourse they do Milo, don't think anyone's denying that, but this started out being about the significant difference between the two, not the shared lineage or ideals. And the differences are real.

flopson, pragmatically speaking there's no reason esp since all of life is a compromise and obv the soviets were able to have some kind of communism despite it not being worldwide. but i think the totalizing features of the ideology, its post-historical utopianism, and the implicit contradictions of international trade (and/or crises of autarky) are some of the reasons some communists believed it could only work if it was worldwide. even practically speaking a huge part of lenin + stalin's programs were about the undermining +sabotage that the capitalist west was constantly engaged in against the new communist state so here is another even more practical reason -- until it's worldwide the filthy capitalists will stop at nothing to "strangle it in its cradle." xpz

Britain ca industrial revolution was already a global power. Saying it worked in Britain first is wrong, because it already depended on global trade and colonialism.

autarky doesn't necessarily limit growth as long as you can steal technology from countries at the frontier. communist parents would have to explain to their kids why we can't import pokémon cards though, that would suck

stalin ended up starving millions of ppl in order to trade food for technology and enable industrialization. for whatever reason capitalism has been better at driving wealth. it's not a coincidence of history that all these centralized economies didn't work...

_In part I'd guess because the imperialists and capitalists will move to ruthlessly crush socialism in single countries.

do you think this would happen today? i think the internationalist language (and imperial ambitions of USSR) was itself a big reason for the clash between capitalism and communism post ww2. if one non-hegemonic country somewhere ratified a socialist constitution, but was pacifist and non expansionary, u think we would invade it, today? i think we would just be like, lol good luck w that commies

stalin ended up starving millions of ppl in order to trade food for technology and enable industrialization. for whatever reason capitalism has been better at driving wealth. it's not a coincidence of history that all these centralized economies didn't work...

my point is that they don't work whether international or in one country, the internationalism is just a convenient excuse

oh well of course i can't argue on its behalf as a sincere argument just its historicity/ideological necessity. that alone - the otherwise failures of national communism - is need enough to reach for internationalism.

ok but which one of you is The Sniper

my sock is way deeper sry

'i think the internationalist language (and imperial ambitions of USSR) was itself a big reason for the clash between capitalism and communism post ww2'

1) Internationalism had been smashed pretty severely by Stalinism long before wwii 2) the clash between capitalism and communism began much earlier, capitalist countries invaded almost immediately during the russian civil war.

ok but what abt this hypothetical

if one non-hegemonic country somewhere ratified a socialist constitution, but was pacifist and non expansionary, u think we would invade it, today? i think we would just be like, lol good luck w that commies

I'd argue internationalism is precisely the opposite of imperialism. The USSR ended up turning large parts of the world into basically puppet regimes, basically to 'protect' Soviet Russia from yet another invasion. Internationalism is exactly about letting the people of the rest of the world decide their own destiny, which leads automatically to beautiful socialist paradise.

I mean, technically the US hasn't invaded any of the recent leftist governments in South America, so I guess you could say that yeah, it would be 'allowed'?

We did intervene in the attempted
Chavez coup in 2003.

the left accused the US of participating in the hondorus coup tho that seems reasonably more like neglect than active participation

or like what if one of the scandos went full socialist, i don't think merkel would invade them

not to contribute to this thread's bizarre topic spiral but: what if they nationalized assets controlled by german companies though?

so maybe some Danish senators sit on the board of a German company now..? Norway already has a huge social wealth fund that owns like, your pension and shit

i was thinking like an Iran 1953 scenario, to be clear.

Well, for one thing, there are no Danish senators. We recently sold quite a bit of the national energy company called DONG (Danish Oil & Natural Gas) to Goldman Sachs, in an extremely corrupt deal. We just found out that central documents unfortunately disappeared. So a lot of Danes want our DONG Energy back, in a joke so obvious I think John Oliver has made it a couple of times.

Any attempt to establish a real worker's state would run into conflict with the prerogatives of various corporations and probably also a bunch of provisions on old trade deals and things. A country like this wouldn't necessarily be invaded, but the US and others would try to coerce them into softening their stances. If the rhetoric of the regime was at all anti-imperialist they'd be demonized in the US press like Chavez.

hey guys....

.....

....

I'm Sniper

Bastard.

do you think this would happen today? i think the internationalist language (and imperial ambitions of USSR) was itself a big reason for the clash between capitalism and communism post ww2. if one non-hegemonic country somewhere ratified a socialist constitution, but was pacifist and non expansionary, u think we would invade it, today? i think we would just be like, lol good luck w that commies

It might not be full-on imperialist invasion (neither was the US's response to the Russian Revolution or the Chinese Civil War) but if any country started nationalizing Fortune 100 company assets, or if a Latin American nation told us to completely go fuck ourselves re: drugs, we'd intervene in a minute.

40% of the country would still be down with invading Cuba and making it Puerto Rico Pt 2.

milo is the sniper and this was all a scheme to teach us a thing or two

(Milo that was not a dig, sorry, I just needed to smarm)

'sup

https://www.thereelword.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/shooter_Mark_Wahlberg.jpg

damn it
https://www.thereelword.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/shooter_Mark_Wahlberg.jpg

nah this board was og leftist (ur just one of the dumbest current left posters) if often in a cult studs way. mark s, nrq, julio, dom p all smart britisher commies iirc;

This is a very inaccurate caricature - at least one of those named was a rightist leftist who I remember being hostile to British fellow travellers, and afaik none particularly came out of the British cultural studies tradition (while obv being familiar with writing in that vein) - for example, another of those named has made hostile comments on ILX about Dick Hebdige's book Subculture, one of the key texts of 70s Marxist cult studies.

natalia veselnitskaya?

I've never heard of or seen this poster.

You can always do a Search for a particular ilxor and see what they've been posting. If you care, that is.

This is a very inaccurate caricature - at least one of those named was a rightist leftist who I remember being hostile to British fellow travellers, and afaik none particularly came out of the British cultural studies tradition (while obv being familiar with writing in that vein) - for example, another of those named has made hostile comments on ILX about Dick Hebdige's book Subculture, one of the key texts of 70s Marxist cult studies.

It's not entirely accurate but still closer to the truth than "ILX is all liberal centrists" imo.

There's a very occasional poster called Gatemouth whom I suspect to be an intelligent conservative. Certainly he's a good poet

I mean, what has that got to do with it tbf

demonstrates artistic/cultural sensitivity idk

would ezra pound have been a beloved ilxor lol

Larkin coulda been og zc

Yeats = pinefox ito airy distractedness

the apparition of these faces in the crowd/petals on a wet, black bough

^^^borad description

remember also trotsky was pro NEP which means he knew when to compromise on his values. stalin was far more gung ho about pushing the revolution to its actual limits.

yeah. though in actuality, stalin introduced various technocratic measures and heavy labor discipline to increase production, conditions which only thawed with khrushchev who granted more leeway & free time to workers. and obviously, stalin was far more culturally conservative than the previous soviet leadership. but it's true that trotsky was more right-wing economically, in the sense that he wanted to keep market mechanisms, flexible prices for international trade etc since he doubted that a total planned economy was a realistic prospect, after all the USSR was the lone socialist polity in the world and couldn't risk so much in the absence of any partners (cf. the failure of the german revolution under luxemburg). this was the root of the 'socialism in one country' dispute.

there was also the issue of agricultural modernisation, where trotsky wanted a piecemeal approach instead of brutal 'de-kulakisation'. at the same time, trotskyists disapproved of stalin's popular fronts during the war, arguing that the fronts should answer solely to the communist party instead of including soc-dems, liberals & fellow travellers. that latter point sounds super silly to me, since communist parties all over the world were boosted after the war anyway (the Italian CP most famously) so popular fronts didn't compromise anything.

stalin ended up starving millions of ppl in order to trade food for technology and enable industrialization. for whatever reason capitalism has been better at driving wealth. it's not a coincidence of history that all these centralized economies didn't work...

not to apologise for the great famine and other socialist crimes, but the industrialisation of the agricultural sector in every country usually resulted in lots of deaths, it wasn't just a specialty of communist countries. like, I can only think of japan and germany offhand where this didn't happen. what happened in england during the industrial revolution, the U.S. multiple times (incorporation by force of the southern agriculture into market relations and again modernisation of agricultural techniques during the 20s culminating in the dust bowl and great migration), and in nearly every capitalist country that has modernised its agriculture. economic change is violent, especially in backward countries like russia and china which went from feudal relations to GOSPLAN-style economic planning basically overnight. & in the transition from planning to free market capitalism in 90s russia, where production fell by 40% and millions died.

i don't disagree about disruptiveness of industrial growth tho we're not talking about minor degrees of difference re casualties esp when discussing soviets + communist china

agreed w/ Mordy on this particular point. irish potato famine maybe a somewhat comparable calamity but from my very limited understanding it seems like it'd take some legwork to link its proximate causes up to the economic transformation of britain etc.

Hold on there, wasn't Trotsky in favour of a popular front approach to fighting Nazism? And wasn't it Stalin and the Comintern that believed any opposition should be led exclusively by Communists and claimed that Social Democrats were as bad as the fascists?

... says someone who, not long ago, got halfway thru Trotsky's "The Struggle Against Fascim In Germany" before giving up.

well trotsky was killed in exile in 1940 so whatever his opinions on fighting Nazism they weren't particularly relevant to the Soviet Union -- is it possible you're thinking about the Russian Civil War?

so guys who is The Sniper

The poster referred to 'the war', which I assume refers to WW2, which, as you say, Trotsky didn't exactly live to comment on much of. (xp)

Legwork indeed Dr c!

who is The Sniper

tune of "Boris the Spider"

the U.S. multiple times (incorporation by force of the southern agriculture into market relations and again modernisation of agricultural techniques during the 20s culminating in the dust bowl and great migration)

'incorporation by force of the southern agriculture into market relations' is an interesting way to put it :-P

how is dust bowl related to modernisation? did the pre-modernized farms have better Aeolian processes or something?

so guys who is The Sniper

― Charles "Butt" Stanton (Neanderthal), Wednesday, July 12, 2017 10:27 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i already admitted it!!!
i'm the sniper

i'm snipin' and i'm snipin' and i'm snipin'
but i damn near got caught
cuz ilx kept gripin'

xxxp he could've meant ww1? i'm not actually sure what he's referring to.

i thought civil war

agreed w/ Mordy on this particular point. irish potato famine maybe a somewhat comparable calamity but from my very limited understanding it seems like it'd take some legwork to link its proximate causes up to the economic transformation of britain etc.

― ﴿→ ☺ (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, July 12, 2017 8:09 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well the enclosure system - which is perhaps the key to the transformation of society from feudalism to capitalism - had a lot to do with it. common and arable land was given to protestant ascendancy landlords, it was used for cattle breeding, with the cattle being primarily exported to england. this was much more economically productive than the previous system, but meant the scarce land left to the peasants was of poor quality and small size, and only useful for growing potatoes (irish diet had traditionally comprised of dairy and grain).

aha! that's pretty helpful, thank you.

well trotsky was killed in exile in 1940 so whatever his opinions on fighting Nazism they weren't particularly relevant to the Soviet Union -- is it possible you're thinking about the Russian Civil War?

Eh? The Stalin/Comintern rejection of Popular Fronts against fascism (which helped torpedo the Spanish republic and went some ways in dooming France) occurred prior to WWII and Trotsky was very much alive for the 1930s.

To be fair to the Stalinists, in some cases (Germany, IIRC), the hostility and rejection of Popular Front tactics was bilateral. The KPD was rightfully not terribly fond of the SPD, even if in hindsight we can point to their infighting as helpful to bringing the Nazis to power.

comintern endorsed popular front politics from 1934 until the signing of the molotov ribbentrop pact in august 1939

the problem in spain was that the stalinists partaking in popular front groupings took over and jailed/killed political rivals

trotsky also believed in a "united front" in which communists would not have a shared platform with reformist parties, and which would only include working class parties such as socialist parties - whereas some examples of popular fronts have included liberal or radical parties.

sometimes I feel like I'm really conservative on here because I believe all countries have to have machiavellian foreign & defense policies as a matter of course - I love having a terrifyingly oversized nuclear-capable Navy and shit, while it seems like the general consensus on ILX is that defense and intelligence is all just assholes. My position is more like yeah, but they're OUR assholes, you want them to be at least decently capable because have you seen THEIR assholes?

It's a question of 'to what ends' - even without singing The Internationale, our military and intelligence agencies act mostly in service of the class of people who make life shittier for American citizens. So all nation-states have to act cynically in their own interests - but to what extent has American policy since WW2 served me, the common person?

The problem isn't (just) having a big fuck off Navy or the existence of Homeland Security - ratfucking the Black Panthers and arming the Taliban and backing Latin American death squads and having the civilian apparatus treat pipeline protesters like ISIS and etc. doesn't serve my interests or those of 99% of the country.

miss u

think about sniper in quiet moments. Just, when I'm not watching myself, there they are, sniping with that snipey look on their face. Went so quick in the end. Treasured moments left behind like leaves in the wind. *drops rose onto grave of the sniper*

Went shopping today, asked the manager if they had any short-lived socks, he said "like The Sniper?" I immediately broke down crying.

you just got to find the things that get you through the night. the things that help you to keep on keepin' on. we can't go to pieces we just can't

i'm the sniper... i've come to snipe your snindows

please tell me someone already posted that joke itt

sntf

If you like your docter, you can keep them.
Your rates will go down.
I love America.

All just a few lies from obama

fess up who was it

^very honest post

ILXOR is not a place for conservatives it is barely a place for leftists. all roads lead to the centrist liberal company line here.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Monday, July 10, 2017 5:18 PM bookmarkflaglink

If The Sniper is deep state, I hope he has pension and plenty of PTO

Some determined sock at work in the Marilyn Manson thread

I would suggest if the mods can positively ID the sockmaster then this is clear banning territory

Thankfully people are there to engage in good faith because why not

I'm a glutton for punishment

wow those are some posts

I logged on and was like, huh, new info coming out about the allegations? That thread is pretty active. Then I was... oh... oh wow.

I don't want to give that particular troll any more air in the thread in question, but just a reminder folks, smash that FP button.