Because its meaning dense? I guess it depends on the use case, might make for an interesting experiment

Yeah, and I def relate to the person I respond to. I fully accept the necessity of political engagement, and volunteer time and money and energy toward that goal. That being said, I'm someone very concerned with truth and criticism, whereas there are others who are very concerned with politics. And in my experience, people who are very talented, committed and active politically are prone to always wanna come down on this or that side of an issue, or have a very clearly developed line even when maybe the conditions for having a hard and fast line are not all the way developed.

Meanwhile, a lot of people just aren't really experienced with that kind of engagement. It's very frustrating, and perhaps counter productive, to collapse every issue and practical activity into politics. Like actually, not everything is politics. Every movement has a political character, and denying that is a political stance! But culture isn't politics. Culture is political, it has a political character, but it isn't in and of itself politics. Just like politics has a cultural character but is distinct. I like the Marxist framing of economic base and superstructure; so that politics, law, and culture, and all associated institutions, are superstructure -- closely related and categorically similar but still distinct. While the motivations behind those things have a basis in economics, or maybe to simplify even further, the real human need and creation/social distribution of resources -- which is the economic base.

In many cases I wish for more cultural engagement than political engagement. And peoples experience with politics, and how easily and thoroughly it becomes corrupted, is a real objective obstacle to mass political engagement. So while I am active in and very proud of the political gains the left has made in recent years, the absence of a real leftist culture, or counter hegemony, is a red flag for our movements. And I think I would prefer to have many spaces for people to engage with politics indirectly, than to just insist that people engage with politics directly. There's wrong headedness in believing that all politics is inherently a path to corruption and centralization of power. But its perhaps just as wrong to insist that the only path to engagement with left mass politics is through direct political engagement.

As someone whose talents lie more in pedagogy and art and culture than politics, I think I am less effective than I could be if there was more to our movements than just winning people to this or that political line through campaigns and clear victories of legal/organizational legitimacy.

Submit a PR

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ab5WvwfLuLM

Not the whole internet, just the porn

Marx did not invent the term "Capitalism." It did originate with critics like Proudhon, who Marx was also critical of.

Is "liberalism" the primacy of private property relations in society? Many progressive liberals (including many in this comment thread, apparently) would disagree with you, while many Marxists would agree with you

You are deeply misinformed or perhaps intentionally misleading re: your characterization of Marx's ideas. Marx's theories on mental labor appear in his earliest works, and continue through his later, more developed ones:

labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.

Capital V1, chapter 6 -- where Marx defines labor power

Your characterization of Marx's ideas, that he is creating artificial divisions between different kinds of labor, is in fact a tendency of capitalism that Marx identified and criticized at great length.

wtf are they smoking

Feudalism

Why not? Politics happens either way. There are going to be people who are more influential than others. name any famous anarchist, my favorite was Malatesta, and they were 100% absolutely engaged in political work.

Is it just that political work is okay until after the workers seize the means? IMO denying the necessity of political work as a means of suppressing the possibility of political domination of a minority, which is a real concern, drifts into authoritarianism almost instantly. Its just denying reality. Denying that political work is work is a political opinion. Enforcing it would be political work!

This is not a gotcha question, genuinely want to hear your opinion. I don't think pointing out a contradiction is, on its own, a total invalidation of any given viewpoint. Contradictions are everywhere, people are contradictory.

Also that's not my downvote, I don't do that shi

Honest question: is political work a valid form of labor?

I remember going to a therapist in 2013 and being told, "you're not depressed, you're just the normal amount of unhappy." It took me years of struggling in therapy before those online pharmacies opened up and I was able to get a mild antidepressant, which helped immensely with acute symptoms like intrusive thoughts.

Once I had the diagnosis, it made me able to do more work on myself, rather than just blowing from crisis to crisis. I pursued an ADHD diagnosis, but was told it wasn't worth testing because I didn't have ADHD, I was just depressed.

Since starting ADHD treatment I've been able to stop chronic self medication, be more productive and engaged at work and with my family, and all around just work on bettering myself. Now I have a good therapist and we can work on problems.

People who are like "ADHD is a tik tok thing" arent irredeemable, but many of them don't like the idea of someone who had trauma and psychiatric challenges being able to dig themselves out of the holes society placed them in. Some people just want other people to stay in their holes.

Without log in

I can read a post for about 5-10 seconds before it covers the text and tells me to download the app, so in my experience, that's just actively untrue