old rousseau audiobook autoplayed when I was in the car earlier one thing that was striking was that he was very open about describing, if not a utopia, an optimal social order but in many ways his descendents seem to have abandoned this vision
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I think you give too much credit to OG commies, they tended to have serious underpants gnomes issues where the messy middle of revolution -> ??? -> utopia was smoothed over
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oh sure but feels like current left has messy revolution -> ?? -> ??
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People who are suffering will seriously attempt to end that suffering. But people who have no really big problems will act to gain status and social validation. Then ideologies will evolve to offer those things as efficiently as possible, even by sacrificing concrete results.
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In some ways history has clearly destroyed the legitimacy of some the leftist programs (both the Soviet Union and Communist China were/are inhuman in many ways) but there are no clear programs to replace those visions.
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The utopian future finally died in the last two decades, it was still on life support until about 2000. I remember thinking that it was interesting when even Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy was coming out and it seemed hopelessly old fashioned.
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Now of course Kim Stanley Robinson is pretty much black pilled to the state of an optimistic John Brunner, but I think I would point the finger at Brunner and the whole limits to growth thing. From thst point on utopia started to be all about limits and restraint not growth.
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Lumpenmarxism in the limit reduces to the belief that bad things happen because bad people make them happen, and if good people seize control then bad things will stop. Everyone can agree on that much, so that's what the movement focuses on.
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what was the SSC take on this: "conflict" theory vs "misunderstand" theory, or something? anyway, yes, the Marxist take is "bad things happen because evil people have control of the guillotine; once we good people take it..."
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i think it's associated with elite overproduction and democratization of speech. heads of orgs used to be able to control narrative around their ideals and labels. now you just follow what the masses are doing on twitter.
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