La Marx

I would maintain that the idea that tech-dealing is not an owner-worker (employer/employee) situation buys into the Gerontocratic mystification of its processes of capital/tech accumulation. Herr Krashnaia, if you read my commentary on my thesis closely, not to mention the provisional nature of my thesis's concluding remarks, which has aroused so much ire in directly opposed material and ideological quarters - and thus confirming the hegemony of Gerontocracy - you will note that in substance I advocate toward a war of all young nations against all older nations, a war to kill Gerontocracy dead, which will necessarily be fought on a new terrain of struggle - the economic zone of struggle. The revolutionary obstruction of the major Gerontocratic powers from their exploitative and rapacious tech accumulation and 'tech arms race' as you aptly put it is the historical destiny of the Initiate. So as I have said, raising the price is only a temporary and possible measure for younger nations to build their material and political power. It is not my programme. It is a suggestion of mine that I have myself criticised. Ultimately the price should be raised to eliminate all surplus value - that I have said over and over. And finally on the question of not selling at all, on the question of a campaign of boycott, divestment, on the question of a tech freeze on all the upper tiers, I support this totally. I am calling for is an overthrow of Gerontocracy and a dictatorship of the Initiate. This, in the final moment of triumph, will bring about a world of completely communal relations where each nation can develop itself peacefully and scientifically and where the sphere of struggle and war dies off, being replaced by waves of Utopia. This is a complete misreading. See above. My thesis is theoretical. My programme is revolutionary. My nation does not come into it. I am resolved in fact to destroy it in the fires of revolutionary struggle.

Selling tech 12m/100t. Straightforward.

I hate to agree with this particular former comrade of mine, but this. A better title for this 'treatise', as you put it, would be 'An Immoral Defence of Gerontocracy.' I might address your treatise in a bit more detail and round off the salient errors later. But for now I am just amused by your immorality. We are clearly thinking from starkly opposed moral premises. I don't think a world of gross inequalities is 'beneficial' to anyone except Gerontocrats. I. My thesis is perfectly consistent with social instability, chaos, crisis etc. Better catastrophe than Gerontocracy. II. In your introduction, "1" is incorrect. My thesis is not all for a rising of tech prices. If you read my commentary on my thesis and the dialogue with those who tried to engage with it (mainly in a very angry polemical and uncharitable spirit) closely, you will note that I suggest a lowering of tech prices for non-Gerontocrats. Maybe that would take place within a specific formation of anti-Gerontocratic guilds, unions, syndicates, or trans-aa formations. I have not yet indulged in strategising and I am not in a position to do so without a rising tide of tech seller consciousness. III. You have not understood that my thesis as it concerns power is operating at a structural level. I never claimed alliance leadership was chosen based on age. Furthermore, I have problematised and criticised heavily the equation of 'alliance leaders' with politics, and this last point, not yet grasped let alone attacked by my critics, concerns the claim of depoliticisation in my thesis.

The problem with this is that you outline a visible political formation built on a material formation and then claim that this has no connection with the Gerontocratic accumulation of material resources, and then go on to show (ironically?) the pyramidal structure of your own alliance. Well done. Yes of course it is a banal fact that there are old nations with no politically declared connection to the political formation that Gerontocracy takes - democratic, imperial, oligarchic etc. - that does not negate Gerontocracy, it proves the rule, in the refined sense of the word. Furthermore, their non-engagement in any executive, administrative, electoral capacity and so on is itself a political role within the Gerontocratic system. The quiet material base. If they participate in trade circles, tech trading, wars, and so on, the base material mechanics of the game, as most older nations do within alliances pace GPA et. al., then they are involved in a political system. The equation of politics with a few 'positions' is itself a product of the depoliticisation of the world by the Gerontocracy system. My thesis is an analysis of political and economic structures, not a prediction of which agents in those structures will become 'influential'. As I have already demonstrated, the agents who gain influence do so by their total conformity to the ideological practices of Gerontocracy. They themselves don't exercise 'influence', they exercise the power and authority of the system in their person as an empty category. The provincial history lesson you are serving me - with a strange if not symptomatic fanaticism - is irrelevant, but telling. Of course it does - but at a structural level. Your problem is that you interpreted my thesis at an individual level, and localising it there you tried to test its predictiveness of certain things like 'influence of a nation' and then tested that against history. That is, as far as this thread goes, the gross error du jour. I never said "nobody helps new nations." This is the problem with a strategy of mendacious paraphrase. There is no such thing as free anything within the major Gerontocratic alliances - like NpO, for example. That money is provided on the basis of an implied contract of servitude to the Gerontocratic structure of alliances. It is possible to send people money gratis or pro bono publico. That possibility is rarely exercised. I am for it in the case of young nations, the very same whom Gerontocrats enlist in the gulag of their aa ministries to work and slave away for the coveted status of 'deputy minister' and so on. Whooptydoo.

Krashnaia is critiquing nothing. It's such a bad straw man that it's barely a straw man. It's more like a crop circle made by him or her in the field of my thesis accompanied by his or her elaborate conspiracy theory explaining the origins of this crop circle. Below I address his or her most salient errors. As I have already demonstrated, the price of tech is not set by its use value - you don't seem to have read my comments on this, or you are directly avoiding addressing it. The problem with your analysis of surplus value here is that you treat the nation not as a worker, but as itself a composite of workers and owners. This is not how it is dealt with in my thesis. It doesn't address my reasons for dealing with political economy at the nation-to-nation rather than the inner-nation level. Again, you either haven't read my thesis, or you are avoiding its basic formulation. The conception of workers and owners within the nation is pure idealism, a fantasy removed from the experience of the nation as constituted solely by the nation ruler whose 'population' is an ideological projection of the base planetary mechanics. Yes they are forced to engage in trade if they want to become Gerontocrats themselves, which is the central axis of Gerontocratic ideological reproduction of itself in its slaves. They are paid an amount far below use-value. The high tech nations pays in advance a wage for the tech, an exploitative wage See my thesis which you don't seem to have read very closely or at all. Direct quotations are a good start. Without tech trading. the low tech nation cannot close any gap. With it, it can't either. See my thesis on Gerontocracy next time before you attempt to critique it.

Please see base/superstructure.

Even "argument" is an ideological category.

Action minus theory equals nothing as well. I can tell you're not a marxist. You are basically a bourgeois faux-radical. The claim that there is only one way to adapt oneself to the mechanics of this world is deep in Gerontocratic ideology. Your critique returns to the same hackneyed point every other Gerontocrat has made - "there are no alternatives to this system." Charging more or less or whatever is perfectly consonant with the mechanics of this world. It is simply not consonant with the Gerontocratic ideology. My position follows rationally and logically from the hermeneutical tools of marxism. Yours is an ad hoc defence of Gerontocracy everywhere because of an ideological reading of the underlying mechanics.

There is no selfish (or self) individualism in my argument or my rhetoric. I have produced for the community's intelligence two classes which I have separated thusly - Gerontocrats and the exploited, or tech buyers and tech sellers. It cannot even be said that I ultimately "stand for the exploited", for I ultimately stand for their destruction as a class of exploited people and the blossoming forth of a world without tech deals altogether, where all resources are held in common. Finally concering the repeated attention drawn to the banal fact that I too am a tech seller and thus personally conscious of the alienation and exploitation of the tech sellers - this is used as evidence against my thesis - the curious trick of trying to psychologise all my thesis does not disprove it, it only augments the intentions of its author. But this is irrelevant. I could cite it as evidence for my thesis based on my own epistemological proximity to the site of exploitation. At any rate that is not my point. My point is that l'auteur est mort. So much for the sujet. Take my thesis on its own merits, not extraneous and dubious attempts at a genetic fallacy. While it may be true that collectivisation does exist in a certain form complicit with the Gerontocratic reproduction of itself, I never claimed that there are no collectives. Finally also I never would equate communism with just "collectivisation." That is a psuedo-marxian position. As I have shown, the benefits of this system is only to the system itself and its reproduction. This system exploits, oppresses, and depoliticises the entire world. Whether or not alliances are strong enough to win wars is immaterial. From the point of view of my thesis, no one wins wars - the system wins and everyone loses. Actually my distinction is more subtle. Nations do produce their own wealth from local production/ex nihilo but in a very limited form. Economics proper does not arise at the level of the nation. It is an inter-national phenomenon here, or in other words, a study of the relations of economic forces among nations/agents. Nations should be viewed as economic agents, rather than states proper, with tariffs and so on, as in other worlds because as at the practical level of Gerontocratic domination and exploitation, nationality at a purely conceptual level is very compatible with this economic individuation and proletarianisation. While tech is a commodity, that does not mean it cannot be understood as a product of labour. In this world tech is - in its selling - is always labour becoming capital, or in other words, tech is commodified and turned into capital, labour is converted into capital. All that is solid melts into air. The distinction you draw between labour and commodity is here not a marxist one. Under a capitalist system, labour is converted into capital. Thus the tech is sold as labour and becomes capital. Or better yet - the "purchase" (and lies the difficulty, that people think of tech as being purchased and not produced, when it would be impossible to simply purchase it out of thin air, it has to be produced by the nations themselves) of tech is what constitutes labour. That purchase itself is labour. And then that labour is converted into tech - capital. That capital in turn is used to reproduce the hegemony of the coordinates of the Gerontocratic power system which in turn exploits and oppresses its labourers (tech sellers). Your subjectivisation of the sellers (labourers) as independent capitalists clearly bears the impress of bourgeois ideology the antithesis of scientific socialism. My experience of exploitation has been adequate enough to the task of my analysis. But that experience alone would be no substitute for my own theoretical and historical training and understanding of how ideology functions. There is more than a hyphen between marxism and leninism.

You clearly don't know what ideology means.

The threat posed is clearly not myself - I have never claimed to be a threat - only the ideas in my thesis - they are the threat. The fact that you and others continue to localise these ideas in my person is just proof of a fear of engaging with them directly. This is because on their own terms, deprived of the only weapon the OWF knows, the ad hominem, those ideas are terrible for Gerontocrats to behold. They pose the question of their very dissolution. Once the tech sellers become aware of their exploited condition, they can destroy themselves and hence the entire system of pointless wars, exploitation and oppression built on their submission and alienation.

The fact that you have passed from bemused dismissal to these interrogations undermines your posture of cool analysis: it shows that you can view and conceive this as a threat. This is desperate. That is proof enough for the Syndicalist. So we threaten you. And that proves that our freedom can be made concrete. We do not go forward, though, by answering possible question with every single eventuality planned in some formulaic praxis. We will proceed step by step with attention to the concrete material moments as they arise. Tying tech sellers down in a scholastic battle of how and where and when is a desperate diversionary tactic. No one can tell what the future holds. Odds are heavily stacked against tech sellers - but they don't need you to tell them that. My thesis makes that very clear. Persistently reminding them of that fact is not an act of elucidation, it is an act of cowardly intimidation.

My scheme is not for "tech equality", although I have used that phrase once. It's for emancipation from tech exploitation. Whether or not my argument satisfies the category of "collectivist argument" or "liberal argument" is irrelevant and just an appeal to the empty authority of political tribalism. That said, I am a communist, not a collectivist.

Newsflash: every argument is ideological. You can't escape ideology, my friend. Whether or not my case is persuasive or not to you, I don't care. You haven't address anything specific.

Supply and demand of tech do not transcend politics. Supply and demand are determined by their relations with all other elements in a complex political economy.

If a so-called white peace is about ending a war on equal terms, then I don't see how reparations can be excluded from that. Reparations - in whatever direction - that re-establish a certain amount of pre-war stability would in my view constitute an attempt at white peace. Launching a war against someone and then agreeing suddenly to a "white peace" (where the defender has no alternative but to accept it) is to me absurd. And I take it here by "white" what is meant is something akin to an attempt at tabula rasa, the removal of the stain of war. Obviously, coming out of European history, there are certain unavoidable racial connotations here. And so it may be advisable to reframe the terminology altogether - with Nordreich's leave of course.

I would request that you two stop bickering and trading insults in our DoE thread. On all that is germane to our DoE, - our pre-history in INT and the various perspectives on that, our search for a protectorate, our commitment to tech equality, etc. feel free to comment.

You can't expect it, but you can demand it. I am not asking anyone to flock to the flag of La Marx and the Indignados in this thread. I am arguing a political thesis. As for the idea of a tech elling Syndicate, that is not my idea either. As for whether or not folly attracts a flock, you only have to read a few hagiographies of Saints and revolutionaries to see that - yes, in many cases, it does, contrary to the analism (to use Freud's terminology) and dogmatic common sense of sensible and rational persons. Not entirely. This position rules out the intersubjective nature between older and younger/smaller nations. The repeated falsity that my thesis ignores the operations of the world! All my thesis does is interrogate how that very operation is predicated upon an ideological conception of this world - Gerontocracy. As for whether such platitudinous inanities as decorum etc will change anything, I point you to the histories of all other worlds, where it has been precisely the opposite virtues that triumphed over those noble sounding words that mask the decadence and stagnation of this world. On the contrary, anyone who doesn't respond in this fashion to such responses in regard to such ideas by raising their banners, is a fallen hypocrite. This thesis, though theoretical, affects the material interests of all young and smaller nations. They cannot respond in pure abstractions, in generalities, in inanities, in decorously worded apologetics and descending rainbows of patience. They must respond with struggle. It may not be a declaration of war as has hitherto been seen on this world, it may not be a war where a single soldier is deployed, but it is a war all the same: a war of two classes that has always raged in the ellipses and interstices of power for the hegemony of this world.

I'd rather give my stuff away to a monolithic Gerontocratic bastion of oppression and exploitation (NPO) than so much as pay INT a kopeck. Just that much less to raid from my nation.

If you look at all the different moments of this thread, I have never ceased to raise the idea of militant action against the Gerontocracy and those who support it. That is hardly equivalent to Stalinism. It's slaves rising up and throwing off their chains! It is clear that the revolution will not be fulfilled with peaceful talks at the negotiating table. Tech sellers of the world, declare war.

My argument has never been 'the world is like this, so to maximuse our utilitarian self-interest, let's sell tech at a higher price.' It has been - 'the world is a certain way and there are innumerable ways to respond to that, and the way people respond to that is just the gamified version of capitalist competition. What we should do instead is something else.' In that sense, the minute arguments about the tech market, alliance politics and so on, has not refuted any part of my thesis. It's pure shadow boxing. Even if one arrives at a true description of bob, it is a naturalistic fallacy to assume that the way people operate within it is how they ought to. As for the relation between normative theories and descriptions of the world, things are not as cut and dried as you'd like to think. Our description of the world has always been to some extent how we'd like to describe the world. For Christians it is Christianised, for Scientists it is naturalised, for Stoics stoicised, for Americans Americanised, and so on. This is a basic phenomenological insight. The fact/value distinction is purely hypothetical. It itself is not a fact, but a wish - a projection on things - of the values of scientific modernity onto the world.

This is an interesting practical idea. Although much the same as the one above. The idea of the union - to ferment tech seller rebellion in every corner of bob - is probably only something that could come on the back of more localised accomplishments, or the establishment of a police force for tech sellers. Such a Syndicate could - perhaps - establishing itself at lower ranges - be an effective way of enforcing those price policies, or protecting sellers. From that perspective 6/100 could be brought to 9/100 and 12/100 by collective bargaining. Furthermore, if the Syndicate could guarantee the most effective cycling of slots, they could also make it more attractive to buyers. No gaps. If a large aa were established of sellers who would only accept a certain price, that could cause a chain reaction for all sellers. La Marx

This is priceless. As for the pedantic declaration sans argument/engagement/analysis/reflection that my normative claims are unsound, I beg that pronouncer to take more time delving into serious reflection upon my normative claims before he or she joins the boorish mob denouncing me. Second,, he or she should give some thought upon the source and legitimacy, validity and power of normative/ethical claims tout courte. This is not a cut and dried matter. There are no cookie-cutter dogmatic refutations to pull out of our pockets. And if we are going to go to the end of critical reasoning, the normativity of the rules of logic itself must undergo scrutiny. This is as Kant would put it, because of the antinomies of reason, or the gap between pure and practical reason, or nature and freedom.

So you're glad you're not a commie, even though you don't know anything about it, even though you claim that there is 'too much indecisiveness in the philosophy', even though you don't know anything about it, "thank god"? This is bourgeois ideology at its purest and strongest - sustained by nothing other than pure ignorance, fear of the communist 'strangeness', its enormous death tolls and the the stories of them well circulated and exaggerated in bourgeois society, also based on the naive equation of all states that have proclaimed themselves as socialist or communism with the science, praxis and philosophy and its multiple elaborations since Marx and Bakunin. As for whether or not I have "researched this question deeply" etc., I have researched it sufficiently for my own purposes. If you read my thesis closely you will see that is largely normative, or in other words, a moral polemic disdainful of the facts, putting the "factuality" of the facts in dispute as nothing more than epiphenomena of the Gerontocratic ideology. And from that perspective, the perspective of my thesis, no one has even criticised me. I am just abused and persecuted for peripheral things and misunderstandings.

If I were as selfish etc as my critics and slanderers claim, why would I have advanced a thesis against the gears of destruction, that would necessarily grind me to dust. Because I really don't care about pixels. My interests are more noble than that. The persecution and evisceration of my nation - which some have called "stupid" - is the result of nobler intentions. Maybe nobility is folly to scoundrels. But that's because scoundrels are immune to the logic of alturism, and when they see it they call it selfish. Even the logic of ZI is justified either with utilitarian egotism (a warning to deserters) or chauvinism (honour, prestige, ein reich ein volk blah blah blah). No, the claim that they are equal is purely formal. If Int were actually democratic, it wouldn't have its leadership handed around a cadre of little more than a dozen comrades.