I think it's still good to go vote to keep the worst from happening and to improve the circumstances for emancipatory struggle.

But I also think voting is one of the lesser important levers, compared to activism, organizing, unions and so on.

Both, giving up using levers and cosplaying trying by just voting for a shitty neoliberal mess and watch them making people frustrated enough to vote for trumpf and not doing anything else are irresponsible at the end of the day

Makes me 'member these informative graphics on 4chan ~2008 that categorized users into oldfags, newfags and cancer. Anyone else 'member?

You're a writer too. If you so far decided to not get organized, you and your fellow writers are just copying what you read from others.

I hang out and discuss with vegans for about 15 years now, in political social contexts. So even though I'm not vegan I probably know the arguments and still have important thoughts to add to the discussion, if you can imagine tjat as a possibillity

"Vegan" doesn't signify a higher spirit.

I do admit it was kinda spiky. To defend that I wanna point out how obviously and loud the instagram aspect of veganism is taking over over the past 15 years (at least for the veganism I could observe during that time).

And I don't know if I understand you right, but it's exactly the "lifestyle" encoded into diet-questions, that differs between veganism and other progressive movements. Logically this is where it's ideology (ideology in a descriptive, non-normative sense) is taking place, developing, and bringing about cultural practices including the implicit creation of "meaning".

In other words, a salad recipe with alsmost no practical value, presented as another revoltion in your personal lifestyle (feat. instagrammable images), can tell you a lot about how meaning is created.

This is what I thought is a obvious challenge for political veganism and just became visible so blatantly in the thing I commented on.

First of all disclaimer, since this is seemingly identity-relevant: I think eating vegan is a good thing.

Ok come on, the article I didn't link? Its what the thing i commented on was reporting on and linking on, the core of it.

Pointing out the orchastration of "lifestyle innovation", in this case ridiculous "recipes", is critique of one aspect of vegan culture.

"Shit-stirring" and "tankie".. maybe you are jumping to conclusions because you feel attacked.

But guess what, criticizing the mislead, weird, zeitgeist influenced and alienating aspects of contemporary veganism and its development is part of the necessary self-reflection of any progressive movement. Thats why I call it censorship.

And if this isn't obvious to you, please note: you can very well, and definetly should criticize problematic aspects of a movement you like, want to support and are part of!

"Vegan" as a cultural, political identity is problematic, exactly because it can (!) easily miss out on contextualizing itself in the political. Neo-liberal self optimozation (also of the ethic kind) is an outstanding example. Constructing a vague idea of innovation and progress through the next even shinier bs recipe combined with more instagram image cultivation just shouldn't to be confused with political progress.

Staving of that kind of critique (ceitique doesn't say "you are a bad person" but "this seems worth thinking about") kinda signifies that a movement is turning in on itself, focusing on protecting the idea of doing good and loosing focus on questioning it's own methods and development.

And, regarding the jump to identity games as in "tankie": yup I'm a marixst in a broader sense, but in that spectrum I almost couldn't be farther away from tankies. If you need proof, look into my comment history.

I read them and don't see what I did wrong. Unless you see pointing out nonsense found in a posted link as bad faith.

I just commented on a weird and pretty contradictory recipe article /lifestyle blog posted in this community. It got deleted. This looks like loosing contact to the social realities of vegan media content, but on purpose..

Wow you guys censoring critique?

If you seek to destroy the individually evil without dealing with the structural problems of your society, you safe the world.

Great take on liberalist contrafactual ideology in harry potter (core of the matter in 2nd half): https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs?si=s38CyAHt_ieW50Im

Lol. Very practical. Totally a recipe and not showboating vegan lore.

Seriously, "oUr MissIoN is mAkiNg veGanIsm aCcessible FoR aLL" but pecan, chia and all the shiny expensive unsustainable BS in every recipe (and don't forget to add protein powder to have much protein)

4/10 cosplaying having a mission

I agree with you about most people not understanding their social structural sorroundings sufficiently to lead their (collective) lives in a souvereign way.

But this is not a primarily cognitive problem. Just as much it is rooted in the social structure itself. One must take into account: Which opportunities does a given act of thinking and understanding provide an individual?

In an individualized and individualizing political, ecological, cultural landscape, understanding things critically often is fruitless. For example to ensure social affiliation or navigate through the market specifique concepts, notions and sorts of "truth" are productive. Analyzing your culture to find collective paths of historic development require different scopes.

Praxeology might be a notion you could enjoy exploring.

IMO this is important if you want both, get of the high horse and fly the mighty dragon of critique.

I wonder what those people claim they keep politics and science seperated. You know, because if you get a lab coat you're immune

I think of it like this:

Lacking fundamental critique of the political economy, they believe the liberal narrative of the market and democratic institutions would bring about a fair or good economy.

Either you stop believing that, wich comes with quite a reorientation towards your own society, history and biography with significant social consequences ("what are you, a socialist now?) and mental stress (radical opposition is not exactly calming).

...or you assume there is something disturbing your otherwise functioning order and ideology from the outside. Damn those immigrants, if it it wasn't for them there would be more jobs, higher wages, less crime and I'd finally get all that trickle down.

This latter is the energetically more efficient choice for each individual, and importantly, this really is true - as long as there is no collective perspective of systemic change, wich of course in turn only materializes when people make their bet for the possible, not the actual.

This perspective doesn't really exist atm, it's not in sight and nobody talks about it. This is the result of anticommunism and a massive failure of the left.

We need to be couragous and make room for utopian thought while giving opportunities to experience and try solidaric socialization. This makes not being idiot a convincing alternative.

I think it was not only those material conditions but also a deterministic ideology or maybe just power hungry leaders. (Good cue for taking the democracy part very serious from the beginning, because non or semi-democratic structures attract and create dictator-subjects, and projecting yourself outside that dialectic is as naive as it is arrogant)

Shooting thousands (or hundreds of thousands, as my hasty wikipedia research suggests) of the opposition, both left and right, is no matter of slow industrialization.

Admittedly I'n not fit in soviet history, but the combo of "oh they had democratic infrastructure" and secret deportation, incarceration and murder of even leftist opposition doesn't sit right. And honestly, calling that "not perfect" feels like violation of emancipatory writing of history and way of living.

Thanks. I read the tayangyu essay, and kinda liked it, but it didn't really answer my questions..

Isn't the author leaving the framework of dialectical thinking when they dismiss the relevance of ideas almost entirely in favor of material economical factors?

As in: Couldn't have the development of productive forces happened with more participation?

Wouldn't than the emergence of a democratic or collective subject have been faaaar more likely, even though and because people would have been confronted with the limits of economic development, as agents, not just as objects of that one and only party's decisions?

Okay sorry regarding stalin i mixed that up. It's in the other reading list in the comments here.

On "conduct yourself" dunno, maybe this boils down to writing style. But the ML sort of theoretical style plus the horrors of undemocratic socialist history do make it important to stress the emphatic (as in: since critical theory and french subjectivity theory we debunked "individual freedom", but still need to keep it as a goal) part of personal freedom & choice. That wording above doesn't show that kind of self reflection imo.

Gramsci! The concepts of hegemony and "senso commune" (sry dont know english translation) are essential to analyse current events. Also this protects lefties from babbling about classes in a way that alienates them from everyone just observing whats going on.

(Senso commune and gramscis notion of intellectuals also offers a neat way through the whole "get educated since otherwise you fundamentally don't understand your own life"- rhethoric dilemma/arrogance issue)

You need secondary literature for gramsci though. He left 3000 pages of unstructured notes from fascist prison. You don't wanna go through that. Unfortunetly I have no idea of english publications. Barfuss & Jehle Einführung is nice, in case you speak german.

Just wrote this somewhere else. Maybe this is where it belongs: Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I'd advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts or critical theory are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good'ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I'm sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)

Also "how to conduct yourself as a leftist" sound strict af and kinda deterministic.

Plus there is no need to give stalin's voice that kind of space.

Good impulse to read theory, but 150y/o theory is not where I'd advice people to start. At least the german originals of what you recomend there are fairly hard to read. Plus they lack the development of marxist theory that happened since then. For example Gramscis thoughts are so freakin important for marxism to be applicable to this society being far more diverse than good'ol working class in the factory vs. Monopoly man capitalists. I'm sure there is updated marxism and introductions available in english. (Dunno, Harvey maybe? Mayo?)

Also "how to conduct yourself as a leftist" sound strict af and kinda deterministic.

"Strawman" - and then you just go with "vegans"... so all? Most? Some? Or maybe just the tiniest percentage? I think you understand for wich ones my argument applies and how "strawman" doesn't, cause numbers. You know, if you pay attention..

Ok lets cut the rhetorics, I was trying to be sincere. I think you might wanna pay some more of that attention (omg sry I stop now) to "dialectic". This does explicitly not mean you can turn the thing around and solely look at the other side.

So of course no change ever happens if all those one persons don't do anything. But they will only change history if they change the underlying structures. To do so, they have to overcome their individualistic constriction and reach collective agency.

You gotta organize. The market won't do, since it is THE form of organization that makes everyone a single player. Both, in their acting and in their consciousness.