[ home / rules / faq ] [ overboard / sfw / alt ] [ leftypol / siberia / edu / hobby / tech / games / anime / music / draw / AKM ] [ meta ] [ wiki / tv / twitter / tiktok ] [ GET / ref / marx / booru ]

/edu/ - Education

'The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.' - Karl Marx
Name
Options
Subject
Comment
Flag
File
Embed
Password(For file deletion.)
What is 6 - 4?

| Catalog | Home
|

 

Been on a roll with Hofheinz, Bonnell, and Brody recently, and realized that I wanted to go deeper than what Buhle offered, so what if we started a reading group on the history of American Labor Organization and the material forces behind it that lead to business unionism as the only option? We can start with Buhle(and the sort of rebuttal that Minchin wrote via Labor Under Fire) but I'd like to hear other voices on the issue since I know I'm being retarded and narrow right now.

I am not a historian on the subject but as a union organizer, I think that the foundation of the UAW administration caucus marked a really big shift in the fundamental structure and mode of operation of the UAW that was followed by many unions. It may be worth a study.



 

Are there any scholarly sources analyzing former communist snitch memoirs like Whittaker Chambers' Witness, Louis Budenz's This Is My Story, or Bella Dodd's School of Darkness?

I'm curious about the mentality of former communists who dipped and turned state, the "true" reasons they left communism to begin with, what inspired them to snitch, how their "redemption" stories were anything but, etc.
3 posts omitted.

Don’t remember what it’s called, but there was a book on psychoanalysis published shortly after Chambers’ death which proved he was a psychopath who snitched on Hiss mainly out of revengeful reasons.

https://www.proquest.com/openview/8850071a29d27e97e6b480971ad41e26/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

I have the full PDF but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post that on here for copyright bullshit reasons.

>>21737
Is it on scihub?
>>21730
There's also Thomas Sowell an "ex-communist". Pretty funny what he says about communism and why it can't work.

>>21738
Don't think so.

Is there a place where I could legally upload the entire PDF and not face penalties?

>>21741
What makes you think you’d get in trouble if you uploaded it on here?



 

Me and my friend are discussing the book "On contradiction" by Mao. He insists that the external factors are the fundamental cause of development, because when you start analyzing, let's say, capitalism, it's internal contradictions are nothing more but external factors from past events, hence the internal contradiction being the secondary force.
What do you think? It seems to make sense, but without the internal factors being deterministic, there would be no change, no?
Sorry if this read like shit, english is not my first language
7 posts omitted.

File: 1709494811899.png (80.72 KB, 1200x714, ClipboardImage.png)


>>21650
I'd not focus on whether internal or external contradictions are more important in general (part of dialectical materialism is the rejection of universal logic - no need to generalize things this abstract), instead it's important to just know that both internal and external contradictions exist, and both may spur development. For dynamic systems that are self-moving, internal may play a larger role. For a rock - what internal contradictions are impelling it to change? Another important piece is also Mao's idea that external contradictions only work via internal contradictions. (I think this can probably be justified scientifically, but some people are very against finding dialectical principles like this in nature. It's important imo to not just apply abstract philosophical logic in a blanket way unless its proven to apply to a reasonable large number of domains. Else we just turn Mao into Sun-Tzu). As far as primary and secondary contradictions, I think of it practically (I don't think it holds any real strength as a concept otherwise; i think these things are able to be shown empirically but not beforehand, at least in social issues), like sudoku. In sudoku there are lots of 'contradictions', but usually you'll be pulling at one thread and that lets you pull at another, and so on, until the whole puzzle is solved. I think this relates best to practice, though, and not theory.

>>21658
>a-ha, but thinking about things is in fact philosophy!
This is just the kind of bullshit that phil grads pull when stemlords criticize philosophy but I repeat, you do not need to know philosophy, much less garbage like Hegel, to understand marxism which is at its core just an in-depth analysis of capitalism.

>>21662
First of all, I am also a STEMlord. I majored in computer science and work in biotechnology now. Still, I realized philosophy is indespendible and you won't even grasp that until you've educated yourself.

>>a-ha, but thinking about things is in fact philosophy!

Not my point. Marxism is in itself philosophical and its distinct analysis of capitalism is founded on critiques against and an advancement from other philosophies, that currently still dominate Western society in which people (including you) have been socialized into. You likely operate under fallacious philsophical reasoning as instilled by the primitive philosophy of this society. That you don't like capitalism and prefer socialism doesn't mean much. The fallacious philosophical underpinnings of your thought misconceive of whatever you believe Marxism and socialism is and that will show once you are confronted with concrete matters. You have *some* conception of what Marx's analysis means and you have *some* reason to support it, that doesn't mean the former reflects the real thing or that you are able to replicate his method of analysis once you stand on your own.

>>21652
>>21660
Thanks for the answers, guys.



File: 1641495265321.png (525.44 KB, 640x853, ClipboardImage.png)

 

New reading project for the Continental Floppa reading group is beginning. We will be reading various writings related to the subject of "Patriotic Socialism" and national identity. This thread is for slower discussion of the topic and readings and for posting links or uploads for relevant texts.

Join our matrix chat to get involved.
https://matrix.to/#/!mjlMGagFTDhvgxMWhY:matrix.org/

Our tentative plans are to discuss readings on Saturdays, but this will depend on what anybody joining the group has to say. We are still determining which texts to include in our readings and the order.
37 posts and 7 image replies omitted.

Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.

And I was instead suggested this reading list to better study the question of race and class in the American settler social formation and how racial chauvanism presented itself and sabotage the proletarian struggle for power, something that we can't understand from reading any one book.

Here's the reading lists of books we should read before Settlers:
>A Nation Beneath Our Feet by Steven Hahn
<Workers of the World Undermined by Beth Sims
>Roots of Oppression by Talbot
<The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights by Robin Blackburn
>Whiteness of a different color by Matthew Frye Jacobson
<Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert L. Allen

W. E. B. Du Bois is an author that would also be integral to study the question as well

I think reading all these books and authors would give us a good comprehensive understanding, but we should also eventually read Settlers for its impact on the left as well to give us the tools to expose arguements and criticisms of the book by those who haven't actually read it

>>10454
>Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.
Black Reconstruction -> Settlers -> False Nationalism, False Internationalism are pretty much the go-to combination for those interested in understanding the thread topic from the context of the New Communist Movement.

This Saturday
Time: 6pm UTC (subject to change if it's inconvenient)
We'll be covering Lenin's The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up. (again)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm
We want to give everyone the opportunity to read and join the discussion, since this text is closing out our introduction to the topic before we move into the modern context in the following weeks. We'll be doing an overview of the Self-Determination question as well, including the question of how the question manifests in the present.

The plan for the readings in the following weeks are:
<1> Decolonization is not a metaphor by Tuck & Yang (2012) (40 pages) https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf
<2> Democratic Confederalism by Abdulla Ocalan (2011) (48 pages) http://www.freeocalan.org/books/#/book/democratic-confederalism
<3> Dawn: Marxism and National Liberation from Tricontinental (2021) (30ish pages) https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-37-marxism-and-national-liberation/

After that, we are planning to look at more specific contexts drawing form this list >>9295 and other places.
Here is the list of suggestions we have been discussing so far.
<Stalin – National Question
<Aimée Césaire
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10463
Ocelan is the most shameless plagiarist I've ever seen. Is there anyone he hasn't ripped off?

How can you have readings on nationalism without Benedict Anderson or Ernest Gellner?

>>9279
Element client tells me "no known servers" when I try to join.



File: 1698871407744.jpg (959.92 KB, 1700x1244, frenchrev_main.jpg)

 

Where the hell do I start with this shit? Unlike with the Russian Revolution I never see any leftists giving any clear recommendations for the French Revolution, so let's make a thread to address that now.

There are a whole bunch of differing interpretations that are neatly summarized in this Cosmonaut article: https://cosmonautmag.com/2019/09/historiography-wars-the-french-revolution/

Contemporary: The names that get dropped here are Edmund Burke's right wing critique of the French Revolution and Thomas Payne's reply. Seems like something I'm obliged to read eventually but is it a good place to start?

Bourgeois revolutionary: These are the historians that Marx and Engels themselves read: Guizot, Thiers, and Michelet (the latter Wilhelm Liebknecht really liked and who seems to be the most leftwing). The translations are usually pretty old so they might be a difficult read. Do you recommend any of these authors?

Second International Socialist: You have histories by Jean Jaures, E. Belfort Bax, a short one by Kautsky, and some others. Once again physical copies are mostly print on demand dreck, but I'm wondering if anyone recommends these.

Official Communist Academic: The big names here are Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul. These authors combine more rigorous research with an explicit Marxist mode of analysis - albeit presumably with some probrematic baggage about a "democratic bourgeoisie" that must personally lead the "bourgeois democratic revolution" and so on. Anyone read these?

Revisionist Renegades: The latter school actually had some clout in mainstream history departments so there was a big cold war push to discredit them - casting doubt on how independent the bourgeoisie was from the aristocracy etc. However, it's pretty much solely a negative critique, with the unspoken thesis being that the whole revolution was a senseless act of violence and that the ancien regime would have evolved into a parliamentary capitalist regime by itself.

So not ideal, but this school has the benefit of the most up-to-date research and prose. I actually already own one book in this tradition: Citizens by Simon Schama that I found at GooPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

I got into an argument with my professor on this topic. What book should I read on the great terror and to disprove some lies (especially about how it was to target political enemies)? Also, I heard my professor say the Britain was a liberal democracy, can anyone elaborate on that?

File: 1709082585985.pdf (1.48 MB, 173x255, Thompson.pdf)

>>21634
>Britain was a liberal democracy
In the sense that it was a corrupt shithole and the political elite controlled the populace's culture and labor, he's correct.



File: 1708880991454.png (319.53 KB, 520x840, ClipboardImage.png)

 

Decided to start a thread on this topic after skimming through Bonnell's work and starting The Organizational Weapon(as much as the neocon pours through the page). The last chapter of Bonnell states but does not explain why the Russian capitalist was far less conciliatory than his American counterpart(though that's probably just because I skipped to the end and need to tread back) though that's certainly of interest. The book also tends to stress more cultural victories, such as Bolshevik journals being more practical and "proletarian" than their intellectual Menshevik counterparts. A younger, dumber version of myself would have turned this into some Maupin-type point but I don't know what to make of it now.



File: 1680698540183.jpg (317.9 KB, 910x645, together.jpg)

 

I'm searching for good(!) resources on how to outreach, recruit, organize people.
Looking for modern material i.e. "Social Media" and "Youtube" should be part of that.
32 posts omitted.

>>16210
>>16210
>tbh tho you are best off joining an effective org and learning through doing rather than reading theory
It is actually possible to do both. It is important that as communists that we make full use of democratic centralism as a method for which we make decisions concerning how we orient ourselves toward the struggle. Democratic centralism, compared to the so-called principle of "horizontalist concensus," enables the most organizationally advanced section of our class, in terms of development, to act quickly, to be able to turn on a dime and take off, starting off in strategized basegroups, and with clear vision of the objectives, and with coherent and developed understanding of the actuality of revolution, set out to intervene in the authentic struggles by the people, amidst the cascade of crises under this murderous system, the current material stage of imperialist capitalism. Our understanding of organization is that in order to that we may help make revolution, alongside the masses, providing them a platform from which they can act in their authentic crises, is that we have to be highly organized and purposeful: that there is absolutely a need for democratic decision making, and it must be a centralized fashion, where we have a debate within a set time frame, we have that necessary discussion time, and then we act, and do what the majority of us said we should do, and orient ourselves to unity of action, even if we might disagree.


>>16213
These do about as much relevant stuff as the DSA
There's no real party organization for workers in the US or really anywhere except for tentatively voting for established libleft parties, in this case the Democrats

>>20220
Seems good, I'll give it a read

>>21544
>>20220
Ok now that I've read it, it seems pretty good for any genuine Marxist organization to get shit done. It's meant to be read as a group and is a from an explicitly Maoist lens.

It outlines the baseline strategies and tactics for a Marxist org quite well. Tbf it's written by actual revolutionaries and not armchairs. Would love to see more takes on organization.



File: 1708200257900.png (303.77 KB, 588x522, ClipboardImage.png)

 

I've always found it weird that this event is never mentioned all too often, like from what I understand
>Muhammad and his followers in 622, facing hostility, flee from Mecca (a major regional trading center) to surrounding areas, specifically the city of Medina .
>After establishing themselves, they begin a protracted counter-war, chipping away at the Qurashi trading routes, and finally conquering the city. At 630,
>Muhammad dies in 632, the early Muslim expansion begins at 634
at what point does the rest of the Arabian peninsula get conquered/absorbed into the caliphate and why was it so easy to bring them into the fold then the Quraysh?

It was in 628-630 after the treaty of Hudaybiya when Muhammad sent letters to every Arab ruler and notable non-Arab ones. At that point Muhammad had basically defeated Quraysh militarily, controlled the trade routes going to the Byzantine empire & Europe, and was well-known throughout the peninsula.
Exceptions to that were other Hijazi tribes and the Ghassanids who were vassals of the Byzantines, they were conquered militarily after Mecca.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_career_of_Muhammad#Other_letters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_after_the_occupation_of_Mecca

Of course, since this was a diplomatic expansion based on "trust me bro" and Muhammad's reputation, the Arab rulers did revolt after his death and then subdued. You might argue that this was when the Muslims actually controlled the peninsula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridda_Wars

>>21596
but why was every other Arabian power, seemingly so easy to conquer then Quarish?

>>21597
Shit snowballs, I guess. They had more men & money by the time of the ridda wars.
Also if you look further into it, the Muslims weren't soloing the tribes in these areas, but had a bunch of local allies supporting their rule against local enemies.

>>21597
the quraysh were wealthier and ruled over a large metropolis
contrast that with agrarian tribes in the middle of nowhere



File: 1708688694152.png (337.38 KB, 338x500, ClipboardImage.png)

 

Some people recommended me a book called "The Turning Point: revitalizing the Soviet economy" during a debate.

Is this talking point real or just propaganda?



 

Recently got this book, because it sounded interesting and reading the first pages I found it to be promising. So I'm dropping it in here. Perhaps we can talk about it.

It's a collection of essays by Evald Ilyenkov, a Soviet philosopher, who acted as a figure to make Hegel's role in Marxism understandable and accessible to the general public.
18 posts and 1 image reply omitted.

>>10452
>Evald Ilyenkov
I like some of his stuff but he's a bit too much of a hegelian for me. I lean towards the anti Humanist stances, kinda like althusser though I think his structuralism leans too far much into postmodern positions and his comments on political economy can be retarded especially on the productive relations. their was a brand of anti Humanist sentiment within the early Soviet Union though (prolekult specifically, though I have my issues with them).
>>10650
> i never read any hegel, only marx+lenin+stalin
Have you ever thought about reading Plekhanov before?

File: 1679592066577.png (3.23 MB, 1125x1492, ClipboardImage.png)

>>12647
Say what you want about Althusser, but he put anti-humanism into practice


David Bakhurst - Discussing "Ilyenkov's Hegel" from "The Heart of the Matter"

Nov 26, 2023 David is author of the ground-breaking "Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov". He is George Whalley Distinguished University Professor and John and Ella G. Charlton Professor of Philosophy at Queen's university, Ontario.

In this discussion we focus on his essay "Ilyenkov's Hegel", from his latest book "The Heart of the Matter: Ilyenkov, Vygotsky, and the Courage of Thought". The essay helps to situate Ilyenkov in his philosophical context and explore some of his goals and motivations.

I saw + read this article, have very minimal thoughts about it. Anyone else seen it?
https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/08/what-contradictions-cannot-be/

It critiques dialectical logic, specifically the concept of 'contradiction'. Specifically goes against Ilyenkov a few times too.

Personally it wasn't that interesting, from the start it makes clear that the only contradiction they will be talking about is formal contradiction, like "it is sunny today" vs "it is not sunny today". And later on it quotes Marx and mentions how when Marx says 'contradiction' he really could have just called it a social conflict or something. This is basically my view as well - it's not that useful to talk about contradictions, we have in the material realm, conflicts, and in the linguistic/theoretical realm, unresolveable issues of definition, of identity and non-identity and their interrelation. To me that's the heart of dialectics, the fact that any given thing's claim to total integrity as a concept is ultimately indefensible, yet difference is still maintained. That's the kind of 'contradiction' I see, the contradiction between the truth of any definition and it's failure to faithfully capture the reality it attempts to enclose, either because of deficits, broadness, or internal difference. It's all about that difference and identity. Do these concepts come before those of formal logic? It seems like a meta-logic, because the question of contradiction is of an abstract claim about reality being contradicted by another exactly opposite claim, it's about the negation of the original claim, and the paradox between that negation and the relative validity of the claim. Anyways I might be off on this last thought idk.



Delete Post [ ]
[ home / rules / faq ] [ overboard / sfw / alt ] [ leftypol / siberia / edu / hobby / tech / games / anime / music / draw / AKM ] [ meta ] [ wiki / tv / twitter / tiktok ] [ GET / ref / marx / booru ]
[ 1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6 /7 /8 /9 /10 /11 /12 /13 /14 /15 /16 /17 /18 /19 /20 /21 /22 /23 /24 /25 /26 /27 /28 /29 /30 /31 /32 /33 /34 /35 /36 ]
| Catalog | Home