Respectfully, I’m not sure you are appreciating just how expansive the realm of materialist analysis is, considering it’s just applying the scientific method to understanding the world.

But the realm of materialist analysis is not equivalent to dialectical materialism. If the former is just applying the scientific method to understanding the material world (which, I’ll add, doesn’t mean much in isolation), dialectical materialism is a specific framework by which the scientific method is applied. Sort of like how physics and chemistry are both just applying the scientific method to understanding the natural world, yet each has their own framework that may capture the truth to different degrees in different situations.

I also don’t think it’s worth it to let unknowns paralyze us in our actions when we’re in such a dire situation, out of time, and 95% sure of our course.

I don’t disagree, which is why I happily do mutual aid work with MLs. I know we all want the same things, materially speaking. The problem is that anarchists have the underlying fear that our allies will, at some point, decide to violently enforce their own framework of how the material world works (or can work) onto us, justifying it by claiming you’re simply using science. It doesn’t help that y’all already take every opportunity to explain how those of us who are rightfully wary of people claiming to have absolute truth are simply misguided or uneducated.

I deleted my original comment because it wasn’t worded very well and came from a place of frustration and exhaustion. But what I was attempting to get at with “context-dependent dynamics” is that the model of history described by Marx can’t be claimed to hold explanatory power in every possible aspect of sociology/anthropology/social sciences generally, because that’s not how any model of anything works (as you said). Whenever I get into these conversations with MLs, it feels like they can’t conceive of there being an aspect of how the human world works that isn’t reducible to class struggle and dialectical materialism. Comparing it to physics, it’s like they’re hearing about quantum mechanics and all the extra complications and nuances that introduced in order to explain results that classical physics couldn’t, and just perpetually going “nah, classical physics has been right about everything else. We must just be mismeasuring these results.”

Ooh, time for the classic “we violently shut down your attempt at revolution, therefore your theory must not work” argument y’all like to use that totally isn’t just a repackage of the liberal argument about why communism doesn’t work. You’re so caught up in your dogma that you’re repeating the same gaslighting shit capitalists spout to justify why capitalism/liberal democracy is the only realistic system.

there’s no group which perceives the abusive dynamics of this civilization with a greater degree of intellectual clarity as a whole.

…except for anarcho-communists who actually know what they’re talking about.

I don’t disagree with this as a whole–Marxists are pretty much dead on with most of their analysis and see the world a hell of a lot more clearly than people still indoctrinated by capitalism. The problem is that Marxists-Leninists don’t go far enough when they diagnose the problems with capitalist society. They think it’s enough that power structures are seized by the proletariat and set up to align with their interests, as they believe (based on their analysis of how societies work) this will inherently cause the power structures to wither away over time. But that’s not how power works. You can’t fully reduce it down to class conflict.

When a Marxist says “the history of societies is the history of class struggle”, imo there are two ways to read it: (a) Class and class struggle has made up the core of all societies’ structure and general existence for all history; or (b) There is nothing else to societies’ structure or general existence that is not reducible to class and class struggle

I agree with (a). It’s supported by history and evidence. (b) inherently can’t be because it presupposes itself.

From my own understanding of history, I think that a strictly ML understanding of how societies work misses a vitally important aspect of the role power plays. I could be wrong about that! But I’ve yet to see a ML explanation of why it’s necessarily wrong. And I think the reason for that it because ML theory presupposes itself. It wants to say (b). And in that sense, I think it’s actually a wildly un-humble framework: not only does it make the bold claim that all of history is just class, it forms the basis for governments that force this restrictive historical understanding on people and dismiss any other framework as liberal or reactionary.

As the article claims about MLs, there are plenty of anarchists who don’t know what they’re talking about–who have a really shallow understanding of power or are secretly just liberals. But anarcho-communism is thus far the only framework I’ve found that addresses all of the historical dynamics and structures identified by Marx and Marxists while still being humble enough to admit that it doesn’t necessarily hold all the right answers and that it’s not the only valid framework out there.

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I don’t understand why tankies can’t make the logical step from “governments of the west don’t care about any peoples’ sovereignty (despite justifying their war efforts with claims that they do) because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power” to “no governments care about any peoples’ sovereignty because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power”

Really really sad and gay (I Saw The TV Glow + Final Fantasy 14)

You may be right. I just think that’s a weird characterization for some of the themes the game seems to be going for, or at least I feel like they could have done more to cement that characterization and tie it to those themes. Like so much of the game asks questions about freedom, survival, and the way reciprocal trust interacts with those things- see the stories of Shadowheart, Lae’zel, Astarion, etc. This scene could have been an affirmation of how those other stories answer those questions (by convincing The Emperor to trust you despite everything), or it could have been a brutal rebuttal of that answer (e.g. maybe it betrays you after you trust it with the stones). Instead, it kind of just shrugs off the questions. Like it doesn’t really feel meaningful for The Emperor to act the way it did, even if it’s within its character, if that makes any sense.

!It’s actually my third playthrough, just my first where I progressed Lae’zel’s story to the point where she rejects Vlaakith and wants Orpheus freed lol. And I may be in the minority here, but even after seeing all of The Emperor’s shitty dialog, I see it as more complex than that. It’s self serving and manipulative for sure, but I do think it believes it is being honest and acting in your best interest. Its dialog about illusion being a part of Illithid nature strikes me as it being quite candid and an indication that while its sense of morality is maybe alien to non-Illithids, it does at least somewhat trust you. That’s the mentality I had in coming up with these dialog options. You’re never going to convince The Emperor to act against its own survival and interests (hence it still refusing to leave the astral prism), but it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities that you could convince it to trust you with its life in return for you trusting it with yours. I feel like that would be a more interesting thematic capstone to the whole Emperor story.!<