User:LordCompost86

Howdy, I thought it would be wise to author a page that actually expresses my political thought, rather than just ramblings on philosophy. So, I'm, and this I guess is my userpage.

Obviously most people here would know me for being the egoist of the Polcompball community. and for being the philosophy person. But, I do in fact have political opinions, but outside of those discourses I also enjoy folk music, cooking, antiquity, literature, art, or general discussions about random science topics. I would like to add the caveat that I don't like to be bothered with ignorant questions. However, I am generally a helpful or considerate person and I prefer not to be rude.

= Reading = Archaic and Classical Greek Art by Robin Osborne (1998)

= Influences = Hesiod (750-650 BCE) Sophocles (497-405 BCE) Plato (428-348 BCE) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) Johann Kasper Schmidt (1806-1856) Charles Baudelaire (1821-1887) Sergey Nechayev (1847-1882) Georges Sorel (1847-1922) Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Renzo Novatore (1890-1924) Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Lawrence Stepelevich (1930-) Robert Paul Wolff (1933-) Bob Dylan (1941-) Slavoj Žižek (1949-) A. John Simmons (1950-) Judith Butler (1956-) Saul Newman (1972-) Matthew Noah Smith (-) Wolfi Landstreicher (-)

= Philosophy = Look at my Self-Insert page.

= Political Beliefs =

Civics
Additional Information: Philosophical Anarchism •  Political Realism •  Anti-Feudalism

I will aim to keep these short and briefly explaining the three symbols that I have used to supply additional information. First we have philosophical anarchism, which is seperate from political anarchism. However, the name is misleading as both are philosophical and political ideologies. Philosophical anarchism is the belief that political obligation does not exist, or rather, that individuals have no obligation to political states. It also has a more extreme claim that political states are unjustified, but, unlike political anarchism it does not argue for the abolition of the state nor does it supply arguments about a stateless society. I base my arguments against obligation on individual autonomy. Building on thinkers like M. Stirner, R. P. Wolff, and M. N. Smith, I argue that political claims of obedience are external commands that alienate individuals from their own self-governance and internal freedom. As such, the individual must deny themselves in order to follow the demands of political states. As such, I do not think states should be abolished, nor should we aim to create post-political systems, but rather see ourselves as already free from political states.

Next, I have a general agreement with the analysis known as 'political realism'. This view ascribes to the state a general view of "realism", that is it sees the state as a system of power, corruption, tyranny, etc. That is states do not promote security, but rather seek to pursue their own interests. They are simply the most powerful actor on the stage and utilise their monopolies on justice, police, territory, etc. to promote their view of things. This goes along with my view that political states prescribe commands of obedience on their subjects, with the only "justification" belonging to their overwhelming power. Without police to enforce their rules, the law does not in fact exist. Political states thus rely on their power to subdue individuals, as such, politicians care much more about staying in power than actually helping. Most government agencies rely on funding, and if they solve the problem, then they no longer receive funding. So the name of the game is to increase funding, and power. Lastly, we have the fact that all states exist within a form of "anarchism", there is no real overarching authority to keep states in check, even the United Nations is powerless to stop say human rights violations in say Chinese "education" camps, or the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Finally, I have a general opposition to what I see as "feudalist" politics, this also extends into my economic views. However, "following" Marx's view, or mainly following Stirner's view which came before Marx's. I see capitalism the political system, not just the economic system, as an extension of feudalism. Within feudalism the owner of the land belonged to the King, who would give it to lords in return for money, tax. As such, the serfs who lived on the land would be able to "possess" or utilise the property of others to make a living. Within capitalism, the state (i.e. the most powerful political actor, the "King") gives "lords" or capitalists rights to property, without the right the government would own it, although in fact it does, because it can take property off its owners. Besides, if the government revoked the right then the "owners" wouldn't really be owners. Continuing on, the property "owners" the capitalists are allowed to have these rights if they give back to the state, in tax, because if one didn't pay tax, they would be a criminal and thus not be able to own their property. The serfs in this scenario are then workers who are able to possess and utilise the property of the capitalists to make a living. The socialist or communist in turn wishes to reduce all property ownership to possession, in which collectively the community is the Kind/Lord and the "worker" is then able to possess or utilise the property to make a living. It actually wishes to boil down and distill the feudalist economics. As such all economic political systems are just a recycling of feudalism.

Economics
Additional Information: Refusal of Work •  Self Expression •  Personal Property

Again, we will keep it short by outlining each of the icons, or more accurately, the 'hyperlinks'. Starting off we have the post-left, I mean Marxist, I mean Nietzchean, I mean Wildean, dammit I mean Stirnerite, Situationist, Autonomist, Russelian, Existentialist, Cynic, Illegalist, etc. principle of Anti-Work. I believe work to be suffocating, I believe it to be monotonous, and I above all believe that it reduces unique individuals to cogs. Now, I am not going to sit here and tell you all the problems I have with it, or what should be "done" about it, but rather what I will do about it. See, something like the production of "pin-heads" could be completed by any individual, but the works of Da Vinci could only be Da Vinci's. (Most) Work removes the creativity and individuality from projects, from self-expression. As such, the saying "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." while being a labour bulwark much like "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work", is perhaps a little untrue. I prefer to see it as, find a passion (that also pays) and you will never work a day in your life. As such, I am against the idea of work, especially uncreative labour, but it is not for me to decide your interests and ideas of creativity. I for one am interested in being a professor and a writer, two things that I find to be creative lines of "work".

Continuing on from the previous paragraph, my next principle is self-expression. And the hyperlink redirects to Wilde's essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Wilde's socialism was obviously no scientific or economic analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism, it was rather a statement of creativity. Now Wilde's analysis points him to the great poets and artists of history who were wealthy enough to solely express their individuality (again, as if only the rich could do so, instead of those who act as themselves through and through). He then concludes that inequality, money, markets, etc. are to be blamed for the lack of "livers" as opposed to those who merely exist. On this we agree, because we find it again in Barthes whose first work Writing Degree Zero locates the unique and original in writing. However, a writer's form is vulnerable to becoming a convention once it has been made available to the public. This means that creativity is an ongoing process of continual change and reaction. This program of escaping essential identities through a reinvention of oneself has many important parallels with the Baudelarian aestheticization of the self. The economy dictates the possibilities of creavitity, as well as the possbility of even being creative.

We have from this last section a connection then between individuals and their creations, their property. We have then a connection between a unique individual and its creative property. See, Stirner associates words for the property (such as “Eigentum”) with words connoting distinctive individual characteristics (such as “Eigenheit”), which promotes Hegel's claim that property is expressive of personality. One should already have worked this out from the title of the work - Der Einzige and Sein Eigentum, The Unique and Its Property - "You, the unique, are “the unique” only together with “your property.” (Stirner, 1845). Here, Stirner doesn't argue for personal property, understood economically, but rather owned property, things viewed as wholly constituate of the individual. In which case, possessive property in feudalism, capitalism, and socialism/communism is to Stirner a restriction on what can be called the individuals. So the economics systems that strip the individual of their ownership, their owned, their ownhood are terrible systems indeed. However, again, do I wish to "abolish" these systems, or do I view them as already abolished by my own actions towards property, who knows, perhaps only me. But, on this occasion, I will say again, that my line of "work" will have these creative objects that can really fully be put to my name, unlike say "economic" property.

Action
Additional Information: Voluntary Inservitude •  Insurrection •  Artistic Freedom

You know the drill by now. Voluntary inservitude is actually a re-working of La Boétie's 'voluntary servitude' in which subjects were only subjects because the "voluntarily" let themselves be ruled over. And if they only realised this, they would be able to retract their servitude and the ruling power would collapse. Newman works this into Stirner's analysis of alienation, phantasms, and the notion of insurrection. Stirner argues that individuals create ideas of political states and then let them become "corporeal" that is to say external to their own thoughts. It is bascially social constructivism except on an individual level. That is to say that Stirner argues that the only reason you follow the state, laws, social customs, morality etc. is because you believe them to be "right" or externally authorative. However, it is only ever your own idea of their "rightness" that makes them right. Like if you don't believe in God, then say not making the seventh day holy isn't a sin for you. So if you didn't "believe" in the state or the justness of a state, then its laws aren't crimes for you. It just so happens that the state will physically punish you if you don't play along, just like the church used to burn people at the stake. Again, I claim you do in fact already have freedom from the state, you just hasn't been realised.

Next, I have another Newmanite distinction, something he calls 'post-revoluntionary politics', something that I do not have. Now, that is not to say that I don't have "praxis" or that I don't have a vision for individuals, because I do. It just doesn't happen to be a "place" to get too, but rather a possibility for right now. It is Stirner's notion, or Novatore's extension, of 'Insurrection'. That is to say, individual action that is rebellious. It is the act of recognising no authority other than oneself, and thus realising one's already existent freedom or autonomy. It is not revolutionary action that overthrows and then sets up its own political system, nor is it simply pacifism, nor reform, nor is it the act of "doing" nothing. It can be everything and nothing. But above all it is the non-acknowledgement of states, of powers, of being a voluntary servant, is it rather voluntary inservitude. On this I wish to add M. N. Smith's analysis of external command, which forms his basis for philosophical anarchism, or rather I wish to add Newman's and Stirner's analysis that "external" command is none other than failing to realise one's own internal authority.

Autonomy, or personal freedom in my case exemplifies itself best in a form of "creativity" of the self. The ability to be a free creative individual that reinvents itself and is subject to no fixed or universal authority. It is not kept down, or boxed into certain actions or views of oneself. Like Baudelaire's assertion that the self must be treated as a work of art, Stirner sees the self -or the unique- as a "creative nothingness," a radical emptiness which is up to the individual to define: "I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself" (Stirner 1844). It is a process of re-defining oneself and never being pinned down, not essentialised and classified. For Foucault, the contingent, fleeting nature of modernity is to be confronted with a certain "attitude" toward the present that is associated with a new mode of relationship that one has with oneself. This involves a reinvention of the self: "This modernity does not 'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task of producing himself" (Foucault, 1984, p. 42).

Summary
Additional Information: Egoism •  Anti-Authority •  Autonomy

= Comments = - I will be doing relations on my Self-Insert page. Please comment here however if you have political or personal questions.