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https://www.reddit.com/r/Kommunismus/comments/1lne4zh/was_sind_hier_so_die_meinungen_zum_gsp/?tl=en
According to this reddit post, they seem to be a cult pushing pseudo intellectual garbage. They profess to be “anti morality” and against dialectical materialism too, which i find kinda odd.
If they’re against dialectical materialism then they are by definition not Marxists.
Here’s a criticism of the group, but it’s in german and my firefox translation sounds bad. https://kommunistischepartei.de/diskussion/standpunkt-gegen-den-marxismus/ (I found it in the reddit thread above.)
It looks like gegenstandpunkt/GSP has a positivist view of materialism, which is a materialism without being dialectical. I am concerned about this because if you, or anyone reading this, put gegenstandpunkt in the lemmygrad search engine to find posts/comments you will see an active user heavily influenced by this weird deviation.
It would be nice to have someone here who is German to clear things up cause I’m pretty sure GSP is a cult.
I am concerned about this because if you, or anyone reading this, put gegenstandpunkt in the lemmygrad search engine to find posts/comments you will see an active user heavily influenced by this weird deviation.
Yeah, me circa 2 years ago probably lol. (Edit: huh, there’s a second person)
Be in GS circles long enough and you’ll see how often there is no desire to change the world to improve one’s own life. I had it admitted to me by a few GS people. Their lives are good, so why risk anything? Criticism is enough, and if you criticise well enough… you get enlightenment, better ways of thinking, and society will change if enough people lose their enthusiasm for the state and capitalism.
I don’t know what to make of them. I don’t interact with their structures anymore though. And that’s definitely for the best. Unpleasant people… but maybe because they’re Germans.
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I legit don’t get the GSP hate. Yes they mostly critique the existing order and they are not a political party offering direct solutions to everything. What does shine through is the desire for a world order that prioritizes the needs of humanity instead of profit. I have yet to read or hear a criticism directed at them that actually concerns itself with their arguments about the state and liberal democracy instead of simply railing against their way of speaking or the alleged arrogance of their readership and/or members. Of course Karl Held often behaved arrogant and overly aggressive when faced with criticism but he was also right a lot of the time.
Pushing all their work aside and labelling it as pseudo intellectual garbage is a take that I can not understand. They are not a cult, they write texts and hold lectures. Yes there are no protests with GSP flags and Peter Decker doesn’t squat a house or whatever you want them to do. But I fail to understand why that is a bad thing and what the problem is with people simply putting out good quality analysis for others to read and inform their own praxis. You don’t need a “better alternative idea” to articulate a critique of what exists right now. And just because you only criticize the existing order doesn’t really mean that you have no interest in it being changed. That is an inference step that I have issues following
Please enlighten me if you know more than I do since I also only recently started paying attention to them. Because so many leftists told me for years that they are not worth my time. I was proven very wrong when I listened to some of their arguments and conversations from the last 34 years and read some of their newer analysis on current events. It’s very good theory, nothing more and nothing less in my opinion.
They’re a pseudo-left-communist quarterly magazine (not actually an organisation since 1991, when their predecessor, funnily named “Marxist Group”, dissolved) that is known for its dense writing style and being notoriously aggressive and annoying to interact with.
They see activism as currently useless because most people on the left have views that according to them are a dead-end that has kept the left in stagnation for decades - something that needs to be fixed before anything productive can happen. Criticism of moral argumentation and nationalism are shared by the communist left, but its views of the state are the main source of controversy in Germany. The state acts in self-preservation and it chooses to support a capitalist economy and the interests of the bourgeoisie, because the people running it see it as the best way to advance its own interests. Thus, it can act against the class interests of the bourgeoisie, or decide which faction to favor, according to what it wants to. If you talk to them, you’d probably get something more nuanced, but that is what they write. They also are critical of Lenin. I am not sure why exactly, but the way they criticize the state does lead some GS-influenced people into Anarchism.
They’re rapidly growing in influence in the left, mostly in groups that only mostly agree with them, thanks to a couple of large podcasts. Someone influenced by them, journalist and podcaster Ole Nymoen, has become a hate figure of the liberals last year because he wrote a book denouncing militarist propaganda and has thus been given lots of (negative) publicity. This growing influence has led to attempts at pushback from MLs and more recently Trotskyists, but the criticism I read so far has been pretty bad.
C. Derick Varn has recently examined one of their texts on his show… and has argued with one of GSP’s influencers in the comments lol. Unlike the above-mentioned criticism, he did actually investigate the source material. GS people are infamous for going “you didn’t understand the argument correctly upon disagreement”, as well as reliably showing up whenever they are mentioned, and are hard to push back against.
The Illusion of Critique: Gegenstandpunkt’s Radical Critique of the State (1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xbYicjuQTY
The Illusion Of Critique: Gegenstandpunkt’s Critique of Democratic Law and its Limits (2) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUmLZxSX0dc
If you speak German, Fabian Lehr also had a long discussion with Ole Nymoen and Simon Dressler on GS-influenced criticism they had of the recent anti-conscription protests:
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
I don’t know these first 2 youtube videos. But Lehr, whom I think pretty highly of, really didn’t make a great point in this talk. Many of the points he raised against them were kind of nothing burgers because he ascribed beliefs and opinions to them that they do not actually hold. If you listened to it then you also know that the other 2 guys are not “against praxis” or whatever other people are trying to claim here. They simply raise a, in my opinion, very well argued and justified critique about the praxis of the SDAJ. And quite frankly I am puzzled by the fact that so many otherwise “based” people on the left have such a huge issue with that critique. It seems sometimes like people have more of a problem with the fact that they are directing the critique at fellow leftists than with the content of the critique themselves.
My verdict: they didn’t understand the argument correctly upon disagreement lol
they’re a big joke in all german leftist circles and left adjacent communities - they’re mostly known for being all about theory and not doing any praxis at all.
people who claim to be members are usually the least pleasant people to talk to.
that’s all i can tell.
their theory is bullshit too
they’re mostly known for being all about theory and not doing any praxis at all
What exactly is the issue when a person writes analysis while not doing any praxis? (We already assume for the sake of this argument that writing essays, holding lectures and impacting the “discourse” among the left are not praxis.)
What exactly do you mean by “members”? Are you talking about the people who write texts for the GSP or are you talking about people who buy their material and then read it? I fail to see any form of “membership” in the latter case, and I fail to see the problem with those same people not also doing praxis in the former. Can you elaborate a little bit?
