Was Nietzsche a capitalist?
Was Nietzsche a capitalist?
Carson Cooper
Matthew Hernandez
Not really.
Samuel Jones
He hated the socialist movements of his time.
Jason Miller
No, he explicitly shows disdain for the merchant class and for philistinism. He was not a conservative or monarchist either he had contempt for reactionaries. Nietzsche would likely be some sort of socialist if he was alove today, the only reason he hated socialists in his time were because they were of the French egalitarian and moralizing variety. He would likely hold Wilde's position on socialism in the essay he wrote, a socialism based on aesthetics and that liberates the individual.
Gavin Clark
Very cool. I know it's unrelated but I'm thinking of going on a estrogen cycle/ sissification pack. What's your stack?
Jayden Kelly
P sure he endorses some form of aristocracy at various points in his work. I could be wrong.
More importantly though, Nietzsche doesn't talk all that much about what he thinks the idea of the state ought to look like. The state primarily pops up in terms of its role on its citizens values, psychology, and behavior--e.g. the Egyptians in genealogy. This is an important point because the only times Nietzsche really endorses something is when it embodies the kinds of virtues that he likes, and seems to think we should like too if we follow along with his analysis of history and nihilism, so the state only really shows up as good/bad when it allows for or negates the possibility of whatever you want to call Nietzschean values like amor fati, strength, etc.
Point is, Nietzsche probably didn't care all that much about this or that political system, except in relation to values and morals. What is important to Nietzsche about the state is the kind of morals that underlie its structure, and the liberties it affords its citizens. What brought up fits nicely into this: the primary reason Nietzsche actually disdained this part is because it embodied an offshoot of Christian egalitarian morality, which he hated.
All this being said, I have a feeling Nietzsche would definitely not be a socialist today. No mainstream brand of left leaning politics doesn't favor the kind of egalitarianism that Nietzsche would want. I don't think he'd give a flying fuck about giving everyone a chance to achieve, and I think he'd definitely be against almost all of the motivations behind modern leftism, both in mainstream academia and in politics.
Levi Phillips
stop projecting your political beliefs onto thinkers smarter than you dumb faggot
Ryan Brooks
Nietzsche would unironically be NazBol. Given his harsh stance for supporting hierarchy and disavowing morality, the natural tendency of might makes right would reign supreme. The German workers of the land would unite in support of a patriarchal leader, which would lead the nation forward.
Jaxson Butler
Yes. He hated socialism and communism with a passion
Colton Lee
George Bernard Shaw and H.G, Wells succeeded in fusing Nietzsche's philosophy with their own form of Utopian, Fabian Socialism which ensured a pure meritocracy from which the Ubermensch could ascend. If he were alive in their time, I like to think he'd be, at the very least, sympathetic with their form of Socialism.
Luis Nelson
What? Nonsense. An axiom of Socialism AND communism is that everyone deserves the same and they are egalitarian by nature. He was the literal opposite. Apolitical eugenist would be my bet.
Outside of france, at that time, most thinkers thought of these proto-socialist movements as rebranded Christianity, because they carried similar inherent values. Nietzsche, as any good contemporanean German, would puke at what you imply.
Cameron Butler
Based and reply
Parker Kelly
Cuz he read Tolstoy, not because he was defending capitalism. Economics clearly didn’t concern him.
This
Jaxson Morgan
It's like this new jordan peterson esque nietzchean type never read neither nietzche nor marx, yet love to speak on both as if they have
Brody Garcia
Based nietzche fan
Andrew Campbell
Is Jordan Peterson even a Nietzschean? He defends christianity and speaks at christian schools mostly.
Christian Roberts
He isn't concerned with economic systems. He may endorse a form of socialism with an aristocratic nomenklatura and intelligentsia. He would oppose any form of egalitarian socialism.
Grayson Harris
you clearly haven't seen a single class of him.
Jeremiah Evans
Obviously, the main believed there was only power to dictate actions.
Bentley Green
>Was Nietzsche: ... ?
Why do people worship this guy?
Dominic Myers
No, I haven't. I just know the basics that he is christian evangelical or something.
Easton Brooks
Nope, he was explicitly opposed to capitalism.
This is also true.
Bentley Jones
he doesnt understand nietzsche at all
Evan Lee
>people saying nietzsche would support socialism itt
how can you be this fucking dumb. seriously read anything the guy ever wrote, he despised sentimental moralizing and was radically elitist
Nathaniel Rivera
>he despised sentimental moralizing
marxism doesn't fall within this
>was radically elitist
this part is true
Asher Gomez
marxists are cloyingly moralistic as a rule. the old variety of 'this will inevitably come to pass' marxist is nearly extinct
Gavin Butler
Nietzsche was an Objectivist, or, more politically, a Libertarian. See Genealogy of Morals.I'm going to give a simplistic summary of why I believe this.
>The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values.
These values he talks about are the result of a societal hierarchy - lower members of the hierarchy elevate their failures and present them as virtues. These values form the Slave Morality. (As an aside, Nietzsche predicts that these values are incompatible with atheism.) The problematic hierarchy is characteristic of both capitalist and communist societies, and Nietzsche hated them both.
>Liberalism turns men into cattle
In capitalism, the markets create a rich/poor divide.
>Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists
In communism, the state makes everyone a slave
Nietzsche's solution is simply anti-collectivist. He rejects any structure and encourages the individual to be his own master.
Nolan White
I guarantee you without the shadow of a doubt that if he wrote like Kant or Hegel no-one would even give a shit about him today. It also works to his advantage that his writings resemble more autistic ramblings than any systematic exposition of thought.
Fact is, there's not a single original thought in Nietzsche that hasn't been put forward prior to him.
Amor fati? Stoics.
Might makes right? Literally the annals of human history.
"Hierarchy = good"? Hobbes for a start and many others.
Amorality? The sophists. more specifically Protagoras.
Transhumanism? Started with the Epic of Gilgamesh, a book older than the Bible.
Also, everybody accuses each other of misrepresenting him, which makes any debate about him fucking obnoxious drudgery.
Guess what, if literally NO-ONE is able to accurately represent you or your thought then you are a factual retard who can't write cohesively for shit. His strenght lies in linguistic aesthetics, that's all.
Adrian Gonzalez
>Fact is, there's not a single original thought in Nietzsche that hasn't been put forward prior to him.
There's nothing wrong with this. A man should try and be correct under all circumstances, not original.
Isaiah Jenkins
>There's nothing wrong with this.
Agreed. But then you're also superfluous and not needed.
Kayden Sullivan
Jace Bailey
Just a 19th century 4channer
Dominic Nelson
No he is a crypto hegelian
Dominic Cooper
Nitchy's individual can only be self-liberated. Hoping for an eventual revolution or the second comming of Christ is for the pitiful meek:
>A drive to find causes is powerful in him: it must be somebody's fault that he's feeling bad . . . Even his 'beautiful indignation' does him good; all poor devils like to whine--it gives them a little thrill of power. Even complaints, the act of complaining, can give life the charm on account of which one can stand to live it: there is a subtle dose of revenge in every complaint; one blames those who are different for one's own feeling bad, and in certain circumstances even being bad, as if they were guilty of an injustice, a prohibited privilege. 'If I'm a lowlife, you should be one too': on this logic, revolutions are built. Complaining is never good for anything; it comes from weakness. Whether one ascribes one's feeling bad to others or to oneself–the socialist does the former, the Christian, for example, the latter–makes no real difference.”
He criticizes socialist politics and politicians in general for their promisse to "free" people from suffering, their drive to protect and coddle people from struggle.
>At present also you have still the choice: either the least possible pain, in short painlessness-and after all, socialists and politicians of all parties could not honorably promise more to their people,-or the greatest possible amount of pain, as the price of the growth of a fullness of refined delights and enjoyments rarely tasted until now! If you decide for the former, if you therefore want to depress and minimize man’s capacity for pain, well, you must also depress and minimize his capacity for enjoyment.
Compare with Wilde who endorses the civilizing, domesticating motion Nitchy rallies against:
>But the modern world has schemes. It proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails. It desires to get rid of pain, and the suffering that pain entails. It trusts to Socialism and to Science as its methods. What it aims at is an Individualism expressing itself through joy. This Individualism will be larger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been. Pain is not the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a protest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings. When the wrong, and the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will have no further place. [...] Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself.
Elijah Watson
Bullshit.
He detested the people who had their unique identity subordinated to a collective and he disdained the submissive and obedient.
He basically makes the case for cosmopolitan elites and doing away with the nation-state in favour of an european union.
Blake Thompson
He wrote beautiful and funny things.
His passion really comes through his works and is infectious.
Oliver Thomas
Yes, capitally gay.
Cameron Martinez
why is it better to submit to the eu than a nation
Aaron Davis
"Submit" would imply that the individual is restricted by the polity. He was himself essentially a nomad, having renounced his own nationality and never qualifying for a different one. This was during a period when it migrating across European countries was becoming much easier, and Nietzsche was very much a product of his time. He was against the romantic push to re-establish the political forces that restricted individuals.
He was against a that sort of paneuropeanism that would make Europe another nation, with the same chauvinism, the same restrictions on freerange minds like himself.
In Beyond Good an Evil, at the same time he attacks the nationalism and racism of his time, he also attacks the undercurrent of egalitarianism and submission in democratic ideals. He calls for the "breeding" of a new supranational aristocracy. Aristocratic, or elitism, thinking is a very big component of Nitchy's thought. He wanted sovereign individuals not sovereign states - that certainly isn't to say all individuals would be sovereign as not every person can muster the talent or strong will to chart it's own course.
To keep in tandem with the thread's fashion of guessing what a dead guy would be thinking like today, I'd suppose he would like EU for breaking up restrictions on flows of people and ideas and for putting more distance between plebs and geopolitical decision-making and would dislike the EU for restricting itself to democracies, being overly bureaucratic, and being toothless. He would despise the UN but not be against supranational orgs in principle.
Sebastian Rodriguez
This is from an article on Nietzsche, title in filename.
"Tyrants" here isn't used in a strictly negative sense.
Luke Myers
The only thing that can be said for certain is that he would probably have political views consistent with (You)rs.
Anthony Anderson
>Was Nietzsche a capitalist?
No. Nor was he a socialist, an anarchist or any other of the myriad derivations of liberalism. Look to the classical world.
Ian Price
anyone know offhand what N thought about the famous european monarchs like LouisXIV
Henry Robinson
Capitalism is a non-factor. If you are too weak to build a life free from its chains then Nietzsche is not concerned with you
Michael Hill
Nietzsche didn’t talk about economics for the same reason Marx didn’t: because they were aphoristic philosophers.
That’s why their tricky philosophies resonate with most people, Butterfly, they apply to everything and nothing.
As thinkers, and writers, it’s easy to see how they pulled this off: they simply tried to write something that applied to the most amount of people possible instead of concrete things. Writing about things that have definite value like economics or mathematics is hard, so therefore unnecessary, they would rather appeal to the laymen.
They are a sign of Democratic values entering academia: a replacement of the Aristocratically learned classes with the democratically learned classes. And ‘learning’ simply does not operate in that manner, they are simply a warning of what not to do. By speaking blamelessly and seeking fervor and attention, they killed hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Many Nazis had a copy of Thus Spake on them, and all of them, American soldiers and Russian communists at the time, were deeply impacted by the words Marx wrote.
Many enlightened and intelligent thinkers since Marx’s time have pointed out how he was wrong, and why his Manifesto is so dangerous. The Communist Manifesto calling for progressive income taxes is exactly why you have Bernie Sanders campaigning for president: because they think class warfare is a reasonable way to accomplish movement in society.
In reality, the next upheaval would likely come from within, with a spiritual emancipation of all involved, similar to what the ESOP would be but better, granting all workers with better rights. This movement would come from within the system, not by some reprehensible morally bereft view derived from contemplating Nietzsche or Marx.
:3
Zachary Richardson
Dunno about LouisXIV, but he liked Frederick Barbarossa and considered him the "first european".
Xavier Lopez
>Nietzsche didn’t talk about economics for the same reason Marx didn’t: because they were aphoristic philosophers.
wtf am i reading how is marx aphoristic and how is stuff like LVT not economics
Owen Sanders
LVT?
You mean the labor theory of value, LTV.
It’s not scientific economics, I suppose you could still say he is talking about economics, but Marx derived his system from the ground up, starting with a conclusion and developing all of his terms (like exploitation of labor, and variable and fixed capital) AFTER, instead of learning about the functions of the economy, like many social scientists/economists do and deriving your findings from these data/econometric functions.
I have a pointed criticism of Keynes’ system that goes along the same lines. Any mathematics you see me engage in will NOT be under any sort of Keynesian econometric system for this very reason.
Charles Gonzalez
Top kek good sir
Justin Sullivan
Nietzche was absolutely opposed to mass populist movements in general and believed society should be led by aristocrats.
>He would be a socialist today
You unironically think Nietzche would be a progressive?
Joseph Adams
>Everything I can't argue against is bait
Autism truly is a weapon to surpass Metal Gear.