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Marx spoke of alienation (Entfremdung), proletariat losing its will to live; it exerting significant effort during the course of performing its job. Renumeration was for him insufficent, labouring masses still required an intermediary between it and his goals. This lack of directness deforms its minds, as now it must burden itself with knowledge of temporary and society dependent constructs and interests not his own, in order to achieve his true desires. As efficiency demands greater and greater specialization, its minds grow distant from eachother and fill up with ever minuter tricks to gain producitivity.
Marx also took the same research approach as Kaczynski, which was to sit in a room and imagine how other people felt. The fact that two basement dwellers came up with the same idea is not an endorsement of that idea.
I have a great deal of disdain for both sets of ideas, so I am perhaps not being maximally charitable. However, there are certain lines of argumentation where the only real counter to the ideas is to say "have you bothered asking anyone else?" This feels like a consistent problem among certain types of thinkers. They go off into isolation and use their own brain as a model for how everyone else might think and feel, and to a large extent they really nail how they themselves feel, and describe it in such a logical way that other people can imitate that line of reasoning and come to feel the same way.
They have not come upon a universal way of thinking about their topic, but they and their followers believe it to be universal. When they start trying to implement it and get predictable pushback they come up with all sorts of pet theories about how those who disagree with them have somehow been subverted by evil elements. These ideas can be very effective mind viruses. But their implementation in the real world will always leave a great deal to be desired, because there was never any strong connection between the author and the real world.
Should be noted that much of Marx-ISM was the handiwork of Friedrich Engels, who based his theories on his experiences of working-class life in Manchester, which he both observed personally to a great degree and also encountered through his working-class paramour Mary Burns.
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I just randomly read TK’s manifesto this week and I thought of the alienation of labor. They both struck a chord with me that they are obviously correct about a problem in a society.
I also think they are wrong about the solution. That is, they’ve done half the work.
I'm not entirely convinced they are even correct about the problem.
We don't know for certain that people in hunter-gatherer societies also don't feel some sort of alienation with the labor they do. Our translations of current hunter-gatherer societies aren't great, we aren't even sure if they can count most of the time. And by definition they usually don't write anything down.
It reminds me more of the common complaint by marxists that the workers are forced to either work or starve. As if this is somehow a valid criticism of capitalism. Its a criticism of life and the universe in general. Sorry we can't just subsist on mana falling from heaven.
In my model there are more steps, and they've barely done any of the work:
IIRC when they tried explaining depression to hunter-gatherers, the hunter-gatherers straight-up thought the idea was absurd.
I don't think all the West's problems come from this, but this is very definitely a big part of depression.
Most people have that reaction to depression. Unless they themselves are depressed. And even then if you are the one weird person with an affliction you are better off hiding it.
Scott has an article (book review?) about mental illness and social contagion. He talks about the inuit a hunter gatherer society. I didn't get the sense you could ever get an inuit to admit to depression, they'd basically be signing up for a lifetime of being made fun of for it.
Well, I know I managed to somehow generate the same hypothesis as Kaczynski despite never actually getting around to reading his manifesto. Don't remember the details of how I came to the conclusion, though.
(Of course, physical activity and social contact per se are also relevant.)
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I know he reviewed Crazy Like Us, but the Inuit weren't mentioned.
Found it: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-arctic-hysterias
I know I read that, but I must have forgotten. Not sure what went on there.
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Modern Marxists, but not historic ones. Lenin and Stalin were, for a couple of atheists, rather fond of "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
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