I agree with checking out Kaufman. Again I’m mainly speaking to readers of this thread. I read the criticisms that OP posted and they seem to be doing the same cherry picking as reactionaries. Nietzsche doesn’t advocate for systems. Nietzsche advocates for Nietzsche. I think that left critics are making him out to be something he wasn’t. Yes he was a professor and bourgeois for a period of his life. By the end he was not widely read, had few friends, and he died penniless and insane. It was only after his death that real interpretation of Nietzsche began (which he predicted). If you’re interested just read him and come to your own conclusions. I recommend Anti-Christ and Twilight of the Idols.
Appreciate the response, wanted to give others some food for thought too. I of course hope readers of this thread will maybe listen and read a bit of his work so they can decide for themselves. I can certainly see how Nietzsche can be interpreted as dehumanizing especially given his common characterization of “man as a herd animal” but I would argue that human beings under capitalism are indeed forced into circumstances that cause them to become degraded and dehumanized. Nietzsche would say that each individual must find their own inner strength to escape this condition, in contrast I recognize and now believe that it is up to all human beings to support one another and liberate everyone from the immiseration of life under capitalism.
I like this thread because it’s true, when I was that age I was very into Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche and others. As I got older I embraced Marx and Engels because they gave me something the others couldn’t: a coherent explanation of the way the human world works. Nietzsche invites us to explore the dark places both in society and in ourselves. He was also as poisoned by irony as many of us online are today. I think it’s important to connect to these parts of yourself at intervals throughout our lives, but of course it’s just as important to come back to materialist reality, touch the grass, and do revolutionary praxis.
I would like to offer this episode of the podcast Red Menace as a response to OP’s criticism of Nietzsche. It is certainly no fault of Friedrich Nietzsche that his life’s work was posthumously highjacked and used to prop up Nazism. While I certainly agree that most of his followers are insufferable manchildren I believe there is substance and value to Nietzsche’s work. He is not, in my opinion, the greatest philosopher of his time nor the most useful. What I appreciate about Nietzsche are his criticisms of Prussian militarism, liberal/philosophical idealism, political antisemitism, and puritanical religious constraint on the human spirit. I think Nietzsche was well ahead of his time in recognizing the path Europe was headed down by the close of the 19th century. He resisted the all to common urge for security and complacency of his time and dared to question what all this edifice of society was for if it was doing nothing to empower human beings. More than anything I can relate most of all to the fact that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche reflects the inner thoughts of an intensely lonely person, feelings I have also suffered in my life. I’ll stop now but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in on a discussion I actually know a bit about for once.
“And then the mom and I traded anecdotes about how gypsies are filthy thieves and how the judeo-russian orcs deserve the nuclear option. When they left the little girl gave me a lovely portrait of a man she said was a Ukrainian Hero just like Mr. Zelensky. I hung it on me wall next to me portrait of Thatcher.”
I found the writing to be extremely on the nose and pretty cringe for the most part. The heroes are what you would expect from a liberal id-pol understanding of anti-fascism. Just tick all the boxes (black guy check, neurodivergent guy check, etc.) and say nothing about why the Nazis were actually bad beyond “They’re just big ole meanies 😤!”
krsh This is Burger Barge Alpha. We are over the target. Permission to drop payload over.
krsh Burger Barge Alpha this is McHeadquarters you are clear to engage over.
Drops 10 kilotons of Freedom Fries and Super Bowl loser T-Shirts
Krsh Mission accomplished McHeadquarters returning to base for Rape and Relaxation…I mean Rest and Relaxation…over.
How many people from the 17 African countries specified in the article have you spoken to about this issue? What evidence can you provide to support your claims of “unequal exchange”? Why do formerly colonized nations reject the actual Western debt trap time and again and chose instead to forge a shared future with China and the CPC?
I got some cool little zines from the DSA table at a pride event recently. I can post some pics later but they’re just photocopied 8×11 paper folded into little booklets. 2-4 pages each, they had Defund the Police, Socialist Feminism, What’s Wrong with Capitalism, and a couple others. Mass produce some stuff like these and just start dropping them wherever.
You know nothing about me. This is an internet forum.