this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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[–] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Wasn't sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I'll leave this video. It's an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

05:22 Acknowledges that argument that Engels is making is that "anything is authoritarian"

05:28 Acknowledges that Engels has a very broad definition of "authority"

06:20 Builds a strawman by giving a context "Engels existed around the time of the industrial revolution", reading the paragraph about steam boats, etc. and is 0740 using it to suddenly drastically narrows the definition of Engels down to mean "technological development is authoritarian".

10:15 At 10:45 correctly explains the point that Engels is making and copes hard with the fact that Engels indeed questions the entire political theoretical understanding of authority lol

12:00 correctly understands that the point is that "Anti-Authoritarians want to change society" and if Engels can prove that organization without authority is impossible, it will mean that he will be able to show this deep contradiction

13:55 He builds another strawman by claiming that Engel's argument is "Steam is an authority" and not the actual argument that the organization of labour inheretly requires authority and in a society without capitalism the production process would take authorties place (i.e Steam)

14:50 Another strawman where he claims that "hunger would be authority" in an ancient hunting times, instead of the organization of how the hunt would take place

This is so dumb i don't want to continue and its so long wtf Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time

[–] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes "authority" in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you're going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?

Pure ideology? You're hilarious. Like y'all haven't been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx's ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big "scientific socialist" brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I'm a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework.

He's not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.

minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?

Because the "obvious points" are made with strawmen (see comments above)

Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise

What no theory does to a mf

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He’s not misunderstanding what constitutes authority.

in a libertarian framework.

Can you read?

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He's proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).

Are you dense?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

He’s proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).

He's not using that definition anywhere in his article.

If you know think about going for the "but Engel's definition is broader, therefore, his argument is still valid" boy oh boy I suggest you study logic. That's not how widening and narrowing works.

Say, cooks. They say: "These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads". Botanists say "These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes".

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Say, cooks. They say: “These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads”. Botanists say “These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes”.

Ok I can see where the problem is. You don't know how narrowing and widening works.

Fruit in fruit salads describes the salad. It's the qualifier. The proper application would be:

Botanist says:" These things are fruits. We have tomatoes, etc. I can make fruit salad". Cooks ways:"A fruit salad is a type of salad. I have noodles I can make noodle salad. I use a wider definition of salad which encompasses fruit salads, noodle salads and a bunch of others"

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fruit in fruit salads describes the salad. It’s the qualifier.

Indeed, it is a qualifier. A qualifier that the botanists widened. When they said "you can make a fruit salad with tomatoes" they used their definition of fruits, but the narrower definition of cooks for "fruit salad" (there's no botanical definition of "fruit salad", it's a purely culinary term). Thus, we have a category error.

On the narrowing side that category error is generally not present, say, you can narrow down "fruit" to "tropical fruit" or "temperate fruit" and still get perfectly valid fruit salads made from those narrower categories. Heck you can narrow it down to "banana" and get a fruit salad, even if it may be a bit bland.

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Indeed, it is a qualifier. A qualifier that the botanists widened. When they said “you can make a fruit salad with tomatoes” they used their definition of fruits, but the narrower definition of cooks for “fruit salad” (there’s no botanical definition of “fruit salad”, it’s a purely culinary term). Thus, we have a category error.

Yes we have a category error because you made it The botanist is narrowing down the category of salads by qualifying it to be fruit salads.

On the narrowing side that category error is generally not present, say, you can narrow down “fruit” to “tropical fruit” or “temperate fruit” and still get perfectly valid fruit salads made from those narrower categories. Heck you can narrow it down to “banana” and get a fruit salad, even if it may be a bit bland.

Yes you're right in this example the qualifier is tropical that narrows down fruits. In the previous example we talked about fruit salads. The category being salads.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The botanist is narrowing down the category of salads by qualifying it to be fruit salads.

The cooks made a statement about fruit salads, not salads in general. It is not under contention that caprese is a salad and includes tomatoes. It's also not a fruit salad.

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The cooks made a statement about fruit salads, not salads in general. It is not under contention that caprese is a salad and includes tomatoes. It’s also not a fruit salad.

Well duh, it's because you made an error, you made the cook say it for some inexplicable reason in your thought experiment and I'm pointing it out to you.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The statement of the cooks, "these are fruits, we can turn them into fruit salad" is perfectly accurate. There's no error in there. In my example it's the botanists which make the mistake by widening the definition of "fruit" without double-checking whether that widening changes their understanding of "fruit salad" to become something different from what the cooks were saying.

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In my example it’s the botanists which make the mistake by widening the definition of “fruit” without double-checking whether that widening changes their understanding of “fruit salad” to become something different from what the cooks were saying.

Indeed, you made the thought experiment and build this error into it (aka Strawman). I corrected the conversation to show how to correctly apply widening and narrowing in regards to "fruit salads"

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I corrected the conversation to show how to correctly apply widening and narrowing in regards to “fruit salads”

What you should've done instead is apply it to Engels's widening of the term "authority" to mean things that don't fit into a fruit salad, any more.

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

What you should’ve done instead is apply it to Engels’s widening of the term “authority” to mean things that don’t fit into a fruit salad, any more.

Ok let me do it now since youre dense: Authority encompasses "granted authority". Granted is the qualifier. Authority is the category. Authority being defined as:

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If something is granted it's not imposed. Those two things are mutually exclusive. If Engels was honest in his argument he'd have used "imposed authority" to characterise what anti-auths were criticising, not the general "authority".

[–] carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago

You're almost there.

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