Socialism: Scientific or Religious? | Open College No. 54 | Stephen Hicks

[@johnbrown4568]

Dr. Hicks I’m pleased to observe that much of your analysis here closely parallels my assessment and critique of socialism in my work: Lies-Trickery-Obfuscation. Thank you once again for your professional consultation and the astute appraisal of the work of Marx and Engels presented in this audio.

[@thereignofthezero225]

Thanks

[@nosorog91]

I'm arguing with a die-hard marxist of the Lenin/Stalin kind. He is a great admirer of the Soviet union we both lived. He's justifying every flaw of the soviet system or simply denying the most obvious facts. He believes soviet planned economy was great relying all problems people had under soviet regime on people themselves. For him, the system was ideal and the reason people didn't feel comfortable with it is only because of their stupidity and greed. Like food queues are result of people wanting to eat too much. It's virtually impossible to persuade him of anything else than communism for he believes in Marx like a kind of secular deity

[@zerotwo7319]

As always, it was just one more fiction, one more opium of the masses, one more brick in the wall.

[@stephannaro2113]

It's been a while since I listened to this on your other channel, so I don't remember what you said, but I see in your blurb that you liken "their idealistic visions to a modernized, atheistic Garden of Eden". This kind of thing, like what I earlier saw others do, namely look at the personality cult, etc., don't do much for me. Far more convincing is the kind of work that traces Marx's ideas, and other communist and socialist and wokeist ideas back to religious roots. So for instance Glenn Alexander Magee's Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition; the work on the TIKhistory channel and by James Lindsay tracing ideas back 2,000 years to Gnostic and Hermetic texts. The work by TIKhistory is especially interesting because it lumps nazism squarely not only as religious, but with socialism. In fact, TIKhistory has managed to convince me that though Hitler and nazism were not atheists, they were NOT christian either, but Gnostic. Still, if you start creating more of these episodes, I may just continue listening.

[@thereignofthezero225]

James lindsay 👍 Gotta give hicks credit for a lot of his work though. I'm surprised he hasn't gained more listeners and followers

[@stephannaro2113]

@@thereignofthezero225 Too soft-spoken.

[@thereignofthezero225]

@stephannaro2113 he's even been hosted by JP and is supposedly working with him on his new online academy. Weird that none of his followers have jumped on with Hicks. Especially to listen to his work on nietzsche, for example

[@IBuildItHome]

@@thereignofthezero225 Popularity requirements: 1 - pick one of the big teams, 2 - say what the followers on that team want to hear and 3 - repeat step 2.

[@stephannaro2113]

@@thereignofthezero225 Speaking for myself, I have to admit that I'd rather not approach Peterson with a barge pole. Yet I have read Explaining Postmodernism, and watched his docu on Nietzsche and the nazis and quite a bit of his other work, including all his Open College episodes. In fact, he's one of the reasons I've gradually gotten into the work of Ayn Rand.

[@kerwinbrown4180]

It is one plank of a religion since it has a utopia. Freudism and Darwism are the other two planks.

[@stephent5963]

Sorry the strawman argument here and the sophistry used is the premise the 'science' is the metric by which everything should be tested against. Science is just one of many ways one tries to explain the would around them; it is not an absolute that then can be used as a measure.... Just saying.....

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

[Repost from MMM with Louise Perry. No offense, Prof Hicks. I suspect you may be familiar with my clownish/creative style, which I indulge on other channels.] Yep, the "projection" principle always applies, although never necessarily in exactly the form that one might presume. Because, I did specifically attempt a potent critique when this episode premiered, as I now recall. Why did I need to? How was I able to? Yes it's true, I'm basically the same type of person, as the type described in this clip. (I was cautioning myself with the critique, as much as anyone else, that's always how it works). A raw outtake of my eccentric theorizations seems to have been circulating in the underground (thanks LP, sikk burn, clearly not the first time) and I seem to have the honor of having been meta-trolled by leading Libertarian philosopher Stephen Hicks (as a moody, covert-socialist who wishes to figuratively Blow Up the Outside World, alla classic band Soundgarden). The apropos critique resembles my own, from when this episode premiered. Prof Hicks also poses a question in his latest vid, which I find fascinating: What is the nature of the underlying psychology, that might lend itself to a particular sociopolitical perspective? I like categories and metrics, however I have no formal expertise (and must emphasize this disclaimer). . . . 1st: 1) conscientious /agreeable 2) conscientious /disagreeable 3) agreeable /neurotic 4) disagreeable /neurotic 2nd: 1) Left-Libertarian 2) Libertarian 3) Left-Conservatarian 4) Conservatarian 3rd: 1) Agorism /neo-monarchists 2) Minarchism /neo-ethnicists 3) Egoism /neo-nihilists 4) Ritualism /neo-vitalists 4th: 1) post-Calvinism 2) post-Lutheranism 3) post-Catholicism 4) post-Orthodox . . . The numbers correspond across the sets, all the 1's, all the 2's, etc. Healthy people must minimize, and mitigate neuroticism. But apparently, when relatively increased, it has a tendency to cancel out advantageous conscientiousness. Therefore, the two "conscientious" categories emphasize conscientiousness, and the two "neurotic" categories deemphasize neuroticism. Regarding the traits in the 1st set, arguably corresponding to the tribes in the 4th set, it has been established that conscientiousness is often more common farther north. (Mostly Northwest and North, Calvinist and Lutheran. Mostly South and Southeast, Catholic and Orthodox). However, I have taken a liberty with agreeableness and disagreeableness. I'm simply guessing, that agreeableness might often be more common farther west than east, based on the idea that Western European nations with greater access to the sea, plus less-challenging geographies/topographies, would have engaged in, and benefitted from trade relatively more often, and that their respective memetic systems might be associated with increased agreeableness as a result. Also, despite the usual negative connotation with disagreeableness, I would suggest that the 1st set's #1 will tend to have the most positive connotation, whereas 1st, #3 will tend to have the most negative. Tending to agree more easily and immediately, with what? Something carefully and systematically established? Sounds most ideal. Something very improvised, and questionable? Sounds most suboptimal. However, I think these all have their potential advantages and disadvantages. 1st/3 might prove generative if nothing else, and I imagine it's what I'm doing in this post. I would say there's nothing wrong with any of the various, nuanced types of broadly Libertarian sociopolitical engagement, which I associate with the 1st and 2nd sets, in a free, liberal and functional society. ("Left-Libertarian" has several connotations, in this context it's derived more from AnCap, less from AnSoc. There's no defense of socialism anywhere in this post). The problem involves any of these numbers, in the state of devolution and regression to tribalist culture, associated with the 3rd and 4th sets. I associate the upper sets with Libertarianism, and freedom. I associate the lower sets with Anarchism, and fearful suppression. There's a kind of phobic, fixed reference frame, a mental state that takes control, when people are socioculturally and economically squeezed. Nothing surprises them. They stop interacting with a dynamic society around them, and become 'locked on' to an elsewhere-vision. A mental picture of a different, better, either past or future. (They can no longer 'see themselves,' reflected in their environment). I imagine there's a name for these states, under normal social circumstances. Primarily fixated on a vision of your future life? Adolescence. Fixated on memories of a life gone by? Seniority. It appears to me that Hicks may be seeking to critique the lower class. The Anarchists. The culture-space, or rather sub-cultures in a vacuum. He's right. It's unfortunate, but it's difficult to see clearly in this state, this culture-space should not ascend into the sphere of governance. This is a brand of underground, burgeoning populism. (I recommend today's Jolly Heretic episode, with Curtis Yarvin). ...When the Randian hero descends into the culture-space, whom does he find? Students, young people, women, commentators, intellectuals, low-income people, and the increasingly disenfranchised British. This should go without saying, but it's a serious and dangerous problem for so many people in Western societies to remain subverted, over such a duration of time. This may have become my culture (there's a plethora of clever, and interesting people dwelling down here,) but it will never become my politics. Nor my 'religion,' on any remotely recognizable definition of the term. Nevertheless, (while not especially wishing to troll a hero of mine,) might I affably counter, with... 'Ok Boomer?'

[@SuperFinGuy]

Says the video is about socialism, shows communist symbol lol

[@stephannaro2113]

Marx used the words interchangeably, so why not. Then there's this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist-style_emblems

[@somebodyintheinternet5478]

Transcending the current economic contradictions by abandoning your material belongings that are merely being reflected by your mind and you have no power to value them for an arbitrary altruistic value of accelerating human transcendence towards a post-scarcity hedonistic utopia does sound religious to me.

[@SuperFinGuy]

@@stephannaro2113 like the article says the symbol used in this video is a soviet one. The soviets highjacked the term "communism". For Marx socialism and communism meant the same but he was not talking about what the soviets called communism. He didn't endorse a special class or a dictatorship, much for the contrary. He wanted people to be free of exploiters.

[@SuperFinGuy]

@@somebodyintheinternet5478 lol nice strawman, socialism is not about abandoning your belongings much for the contrary, it is specially not about abandoning your time and labor for a corporation. Believing that the market magically fixes everything in society that seems more like a religion to me.

[@somebodyintheinternet5478]

@@SuperFinGuy Indeed, working mindlessly for a state or a communal collective for some hidden "greater good of your people" rather than "your own selfish material desires" does sound religious to me, and unlike working for a corporation or a restaurant where you exchange your service for capital that you can use or save, you only get paid by "what you need", because obviously, sticking to your material reality is selfish, you are way above than that, and you need...no...MUST, provide for others even at the expense of yourself. Where unlike I can save money, I can't save bread and trade it to my fellow men to get something else I wanted which I see as more desirable. I can't even trade, trade means I own something and to trade it for the ownership of something else, but when we all own everything and have abolished private property and have agreed that if I had too much of something, or something that would generate product, then it's not really my personal belonging and it's instead the people's™ (even though this doesn't make any sense lmao) I don't need to trade anything! The person who has "to much of what I need" HAS TO give me what he has. Also, nice strawman, the free market doesn't "magically fixes itself", it's us, us humans, you and I who fix things, it's what we do when we want to accomplish something. Unlike of course, your religious view that, once we abandon our material belongings and instead work effortlessly (because if we get tired the poor hippie who needs our help won't get bread) for an imaginary pie in the sky goal, we will achieve paradise on earth, The Garden of Eden, Plato's republic and whatever zealous ideas socialists believe in. In fact, I want to say that, what socialism is to you, is what capitalism literally is. You are an individual, free labourer, you have the say on where to work and what you want to dedicate your life to work at. Your boss doesn't tell you what to do with your house, and doesn't tell you what to do with your money. Your time and labour is important my dude, don't let others tell you what to be, or, don't let the state tell you what to be, this is what capitalism and free markets is about.