/edu/ - Education

>>26263
thanks a lot!!!

>The USSR was socialist according to Marx
Okay let's look at what he said. Marx had the Paris Communes as his main inspiration of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We can see this here :
<"Of late, the social-democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." - Engels, in the introduction of 1891 to the Civil War in France
<"It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor." - Marx, in the same book
Now, the Commune had : representative delegates, repossession of the means of productions to give to the workers in the forms of co-ops, democractic assemblies to decide on how to govern. Again, this for Marx was meant to be an intermediate state of repossession of the political and economic power.

Now, let's look at the soviets : no representatives in the soviets, bureaucratic management by the Party of the economy, 70 years of "transition"
That's quite a lot of differences. It is true that originally, Lenin had set out to give the soviets (i.e. the local democratic councils) the political power, which would've indeed ressembled closer to the Commune. However, this did not come to be due to a plurality of factors, hence making the USSR a bureaucratic Party-State with peculiar productive relations.

>Hated
Is it really "hated" or just ignored?
As for an economic reading list, there is a precise timeline of Marx's manuscripts. There are his writings from 1844-7: (i) Paris Notebooks (which are translated as the 1844 Manuscripts, along with Writings on Mill and Ricardo), (ii) Wage Labour and Capital, and (iii) Poverty of Philisophy - which is a response to Proudhon's own Critique. After this there is the Grundrisse, or the "Groundwork" of the Critique of Political Economy (1857-8). These notebooks effectively structure the motion of the next decade of writing: (i) "Zur Kritik" (1859), which is later configured into the first three chapters of Capital Vol. 1 (1867). After this are the (ii) Economic Manuscripts of 1861-3, or Theories of Surplus Value. There is then the (iii) Process of Production of Capital (1864), then the (iv) Economic Manuscripts of 1864-5, or Capital Vol. 3 - interestingly, this was written before the other volumes. After this is then (v) Value, Price and Profit (1865), which is a speech prepared by Marx for a meeting, and was only published posthomously, but acts as a useful summary of various ideas. After this comes (vi) Capital Vol. 1 (1867), which Marx was originally dissatisfied with, and so sought to revise various sections. He published the 1873 version with revisions in place. After this is (vii) Capital Vol. 2 (1885), which could not be published in Marx's lifetime due to its incompletion, but was worked on by Marx from around 1865-78 (in the Preface to Vol. 2, Engels explains that Marx's schedule and bad health led to limited additions to the manuscript, the last of which was given in 1878). Engels' editorialisation for Volume 2 and 3 (1885-94) were necessary - as well as an English translation for Capital Vol. 1 in 1886. Theories of Surplus Value was only published from Kautsky's efforts in 1910, and the Grundrisse was only published around 1940 - so, everything was published backwards. It should be noted that without the Soviet Union, we would lack many, many Marx texts. The 1844 Manuscripts were published in 1932, for example, so what we take for granted didn't used to be so. There are even still untranslated Marx writings.

So, here's the list of Marx's economic writings, for general interest:

• 1844 Manuscripts (1844)
  
• Comments on Mill/Ricardo (1844)
  
• Wage Labour and Capital (1847)
  
• Poverty of Philosophy (18

Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>26251
>One can, indeed, imagine a t-shirt which has far more labour put into it with a more complex design but which is worth less and priced less because instead of a /leftypol/ design it has a large declaration that the wearer is a pedophile.
Such t shirts were in fact sold at malcolm mclarens "SEX" shop, according to the autobiography of the punk model, Jordan. No really surprising there were fights on the King's Road between punks and the more traditional teddy boys.

>>26251
But unless you're got a punky buyer in 1977 you've basically made a mud pie, not a t shirt

Ricardo gives the starting conditions of the LTV here:
<Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them. There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scarce books and coins, wines of a peculiar quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess them. These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily exchanged in the market. By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour,. and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them. In speaking then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm
So, the LTV only applies to most goods, but not all of them.
>if the premise that the value of something is determined by the amount of human work that goes into it isn't true in every context, then the whole law of falling rate of profit doesn't hold true in every context either
That's true, but Marx also allows for countering tendencies in the law of the falling rate of profit. These concerns are mostly taken up by mainstream economics in "trade cycles" or "business cycles" anyway, so it is not an esoteric Marxist reading of things, but an exoteric fact.

>>25362
>Austrian School definition of price
The Austrian School has an absolute separation between values and prices, the same as the Classicists and Marxists. For all schools of thought, the value and price only coincide by equilibrium of supply and demand. This is why goods can be "over-priced" in colloquial language. If all prices were identical to values, this couldn't be said. But this argument goes all the way back to Scholastics like Aquinas or Luther, who said that prices can differ from what a thing is "worth".
>The prices of things are set by merchants in response to what they understand the respective value of those things to be.
No. A merchant "buys low and sells high". There is no other imperative. This is why the only regulator on market price is a mutual competition between merchants, lowering prices to a minimum. The minmum price in a free market is seen to be a commodity's "value".

>>22049
When Soviet tanks entered Hungary in 1956, supporters of this were called "tankies". This happened under Khruschev, not Stalin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgNVG9a4XU

>>22049
Oh you should definitely read Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, I would describe it as a very revealing text.

Translations of Russian
https://www.marxistphilosophy.org/RussTrans.htm
and Chinese
https://www.marxistphilosophy.org/ChinTransB.htm
Marxist writing on Dialectical Materialism.

https://www.marxistphilosophy.org/Aizenberg.pdf

>>22066
not to mention the repressed anti de-stalinization protests that khrushev also repressed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations

>>22105
Very under discussed part of Soviet-communist discussion

>>26218
Read all Plato's dialogues, especially the harder ones. Take your time, learn how to think. Don't buy the usual formulas, use the dialogues as conceptual workshops to make ideas clash with one another. Don't bother with the introductions unless they give some historical context and explains some of the complex terms, so you dont stumble into "false friends" (google it), such as ουσία and other such terms. Don't believe the usual interpretations, such as the supposed world of ideas vs world of the bodies and all that christian dualist crap, and also take the Phaedo with a grain of salt, don't go about reading the other dialogues basing your interpretation on the Phaedo, or on any other one for that matter. I say this because the usual crap that people say about Plato seems to take the Phaedo as the one and only dialogue he wrote. Dont try to fit everything in a single mega system that Plato supposedly had. Dont buy all the biographical crap, the introductions where they speak about Plato as if he was their neighbor, when we actually know almost nothing about his life. Dont bother with that, just use the dialogues to see how complex speculative concepts move, work each other out, transform into one another, destroy one another, etc.

This way, you will learn how to think, because Plato has put into the dialogues everything a philosopher needs. In the dialogues philosophy appears in its natural element, it's natural habitat if you will: two or more people talking about concepts, take advantage of that and treat them as if they were a friend you were reasoning with.

If I were you I would follow up with some Aristotle, some modern stuff (Descartes Spinoza Leibniz Hume etc) and then some Kant. Then, whatever you want, you are from that point onwards free. Take a word of advice from me: there will probably be a point you'll get into romanticism and/or existentialism and similar lines, be extremely wary of that because it's a phase not to get stuck on. Be wary of the philosophers that criticize Hegel saying he is an absolutist, that he rejects feeling, that he rejects this and that… Give good old Hegel the benefit of the doubt and approach him someday with an open mind, he is an endless source of complex concepts and manouvers no philosopher should abstain himself from. Marx himself said that Hegel "truly has the last say in philosophy". AlsPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>26223
Yes, Alfred Whitehead said that all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato and Aristotle would be the most influential interpretation of Plato via scholasticism which is more or less a synthesis of the two and is still upheld in Abrahamic circles as a viable system into modern times. So one should definitely read those two authors.

Then as far as eastern philosophy, one should read the Upanishads and bhagavad Gita, Laozi, Zhuangzi and the I Ching, Visuddhimagga and Milinda Panha

>>26224
>Yes, Alfred Whitehead said that all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato and Aristotle would be the most influential interpretation of Plato via scholasticism which is more or less a synthesis of the two and is still upheld in Abrahamic circles as a viable system into modern times. So one should definitely read those two authors.

First and foremost, Aristotelianism is but a small fraction of scholasticism. There are countless other schools and the Aristotelian one only got prominent in the end, and was never in a position of undisputed hegemony. Secondly, Aristotle in itself is very different from scholasticism, and Plato never ceased to be a direct influence in its own right, save for the long time in which most of his dialogues were lost in western Europe alongside most of the corpus aristotelicum. Even still, some dialogues always stayed in circulation, such as the Timaeus (for obvious reasons), and many of his ideas (or rather, ideas about his ideas), through Augustine, Boetius, Dionysus Aeropagite, and this general neoplatonic mileau of early christian thought. In the 1200s, the corpus aristotelicum was recovered, iirc, by translations from the arabic comissioned in Spain (translations themselves made from syriac, which themselves were made from greek), and Aristotle was back in the scene. All of Plato's dialogues were recovered afterwards, in the 1500s, after the fall of constantinople, when many greek scholars fled to Italy, along the original greek version of aristotle, again, iirc. Here Plato was truly recovered and had an immense influence in renaissance and early modern philosophy. If you read Descartes meditations after you read the Phaedo, you will understand, and this is just one connection.


Either way, I didn't recommend you Plato because he is an influential guy. I didn't even recommend it to you to get ahold of the philosophical canon and get your stuff together historically. In Plato's dialogue you will find a truly godlike philosopher showing how CONCEPTS work, what are their limits, what configurations can they work in, how do they clash, which ones are implied (often surreptitiously, unbeknownst to the user) by using and abusing other ones… By reading Plato you don't become a PLATONIST, you learn how to THINK, provided you approach the text without those plain formulas found iPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>Is it better to be patient or start with the harder texts and reread them?
It's not as if you have to waste your time with obscure works. You just need to read Plato and Aristotle as a preliminary to any further philosophy. It all begins with them. This is what Kant writes (1787):
<In relation to the origin of the pure cognitions of reason, we find one school maintaining that they are derived entirely from experience, and another that they have their origin in reason alone. Aristotle may be regarded as the bead of the empiricists, and Plato of the noologists. 
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/reason/critique-of-pure-reason.htm
So Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" is a commentary on these ideas.
Philosophy is also related to various Wisdom literature, such as Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" (300 BCE), so I would recommend this in tandem.

>>26223
Plato is extravagantly dialectical, by displaying the very process of thinking from an original premise itself, and to the same end, he is often open-ended in conclusion, such as the masterful deconstruction in Parmenides. Indeed, such as Socrates says to Phaedrus, he is a mid-wife of the mind. One of the earliest dialogues I read was Euthyphro, which completely changed my stance toward theological disputes, since it showed how the commands of God cannot be moral by themself, and so God is subordinate to a higher principle of virtue. This is tackled only in part by Aquinas later on regarding the Will of God - if God is always good, then can he be evil? Aquinas resolves it into the Aristotelian position of the potential to do evil without its actuality. Freedom of the Will is the capacity to act, distinguished from activity. It is a sound rebuttal, but it makes us ponder in the typical Epicurean way; "whence cometh evil?" I think the only real response is what Plato devises in Sophist, that matter (as becoming) is not a being, but is the negation of being, which is always good. So, evil does not exist; there are only failures of perfection. Kant adds to this in part by denying the validity of absolute evil, for if one acts toward his own (selfish) end, he still acts for the good of one. There is a small honour amongst thieves. This only makes sense by an Annihilationist eschatology also, since if Hell is separation from God, and God is absolute being, then the wicked soul must be destroyed, by itself. Thus, there can be no coercion in virtue or vice, but all is freely given.

>>26023
im by no means and expert on judaism or whatever so i probobly should just stay quiet on this BUUUT if i am gonna say something based on the things that i already do know it feels a bit TOO reductive to frame the entirety (not saying thats what you're doing) as a "racialist religion" but like i said im not very familiar on that stuff so i could be wrong or whatever

>>26023
the concept of a "chosen people" is reactionary
cutting baby penises is reactionary

>>26026
it’s about the purest example for that concept there is… the religion is inherently tied to a perceived race…