/edu/ - Education

Alright so I've had a few interactions with people on /leftypol/ who seem to think that Dialectics means rejecting the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction. As far as I can tell this has no real basis in the work of Marx or Engels and is a good to not be taken seriously by anyone who understands logic or philosophy or mathematics. I was really confused about where this came from for a while. I have read Mao's "On Contradiction" many times and I suppose that text could be read that way, but I don't think that is what Mao meant by contradiction or "the unity of opposites". Last night though I read Leon Trotsky's "The ABC of Materialist Dialectics" and I think I've found my answer. In it, Trotsky straight up makes a case for why A=/=A, and does make a somewhat compelling argument until you examine it critically.

This piece is well written like most of Trotsky's work, but his argument is full of non-sequitors and general misreadings of Marx and Engels. I want to make this thread to do some comparing and contrasting between four texts in particular, but we can bring in other lit if people want. Those four texts are…

Anti-Duhring by Engels:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm

The ABC of Materialst Dialectics:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm

Dialectical and Historical Materialism:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

On Contradiction by Mao Zedong:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm
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ITT we post links and pdfs to critical or constructive takes on Cockshott and cybersocialism, as well as works or authors who wrote in the fields of cybernetics, systems theory, or operational research in general.

>>>/leftypol/438911
>>>/leftypol/438923
>>701

This is not a debate thread. I encourage debate on this topic to happen in /leftypol/, as it would have anyway. This is an /edu/cational thread only.

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the third and highest stage of communist theory, was synthesized in 1982 by the Peruvian Communist Party (known in bourgeois sources by the epithet "Sendero Luminoso"). Here is the document they published concerning this: http://library.redspark.nu/1982_-_Maoism._On_Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
Parties and organizations that uphold MLM theory in the modern day include:
>Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun
>Peru People’s Movement (Reorganisation Committee)
>Communist Party of Brazil (Red Faction)
>Red Faction of the Communist Party of Chile
>Maoist Organization for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Columbia
>Revolutionary Nucleus for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico
>Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist
>Committee Red Flag, FRG
>Maoist Communist Party, French State
Red Flag Collective, Finland
>Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party of Austria
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This will be a thread for posting and sharing Documentaries about history as a whole.
I was sitting around watching Step back and I realized it has been a while since I have seen any of those old BBC like documentaries about historical figures.

Doesn't have to be older though. If you have any Youtube links or torrents to look up post them here. Thanks anons.

Inspired by my reading of the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn
How do we know myths, stories, magic, etc. are not real? Assuming what we know scientifically is true, how does this negate myth, legend, etc? Why are dinosaurs not simultaneously animals and also monsters when they fit what we would have called monsters? Why are overriding social systems not tantamount to a spirit or God when they control our actions and shape our life histories even if they don't act consciously? Are they not what we'd call an egregor, i.e., a presence brought into existence by the actions and beliefs of a large number of people? Is our Sun not a God when it is responsible for all life on Earth? Is the biosphere not some sort of Earth spirit when it encompasses all living things yet influences each individually and can be destroyed through harming the Natural (non-human) World. Are spirits not the electrical currents moving through your brain? Do we not tell history as a story?

In the beginning there was nothing but the One, then the One expanded into the Everything, as the Everything continued to expand soon the beating hearts of the Everything, the Stars began to form from the energy of the Beginning, the stars coalesced into huge interstellar communities, galaxies; in the nuclear core of the stars more building elements were created, and from the stars came the planets; in the deep seas of one planet around one star life formed out of the energy of the planet's iron core, over the course of billions of years life arose in complexity in a way matching the Everything until finally from Life emerged the Someone, a complex arrangement of the Everything capable of consciously perceiving itself.

Why isn't our understanding of the Universe, even being scientifically true, a myth? Myths were once truths, after all.

https://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/review-poverty-philosophy-karl-marx
This article claims that Marx's "Poverty of Philosophy" is just a slanderous book that has nothing to do with Proudhon's real theories.

Marx doesn't properly quote Proudhon or openly strawmans him. His claims about Proudhon being bad economist in the begining of the book sound laughable since Proudhon was respected economist in his time.

>Comparing Marx’s “reply” to what Proudhon actually wrote, it is hard to take the former seriously. Once the various distortions and inventions are corrected, little remains. Proudhon was right to suggest Marx’s work was “a tissue of crudities, slanders, falsifications, and plagiarism.” (Correspondance [Paris: Lacroix, 1875] II: 267-8) Worse, Marx himself twenty years later embraces in Capital most of the positions he attacks Proudhon for holding in 1847.

>The dishonesty of The Poverty of Philosophy has distorted our view of Proudhon’s ideas and the time is long overdue for a revaluation of Proudhon and his contributions to anarchism and the wider socialist movement. This does not mean that Marx does not, occasionally, presents a valid point – most obviously, Proudhon’s opposition to strikes was wrong as subsequent anarchists recognised – it is just that these are frustratingly few in the midst of so much distortion. So, yes, Proudhon’s mutualism – a form of market socialism based on worker-run co-operatives – does need to be critiqued but Marx’s book is simply not that work.

are there any counter arguments to this?

Please does anybody have a pdf file of 20 interviews by joshua citarella? or at least a link to one? I have tried looking for it everywhere but couldnt find it.thanx a lot

Anyone know any good books for reading up on the history of the RSR/RPR? Pretty much every book I've been able to find have been Ceaușescu screeds written by devout anticommunists, which for the most part don't discuss the earlier history of PCR

Hello /edu/.

I am trying to understand American political economy, the history of it, how that created the present structure, and what the present class structure and relations are.

Can anyone suggest some good Marxist books that will help? Pic related.

Hey leftypol! Would anyone be interested in joining a reading group for Capital Volume 2? Because us over at the /read/ group are gonna do that and we'd like to have it as open as possible, so we're inviting you to join.

For context, we've been running this collective of reading groups on >>/edu/5912 for around a year now, and we're finally ready to tackle the second volume of Capital, after successfully getting through the first one earlier this year.

Currently our system is to have weekly meetings over Matrix, on Sundays at 10 PM UTC. However we are willing to change that schedule depending on the availability of any new members.

Anyways, if you are interested, join our main Matrix chats:
Matrix Community (if you still use those): https://matrix.to/#/+leftyread:matrix.org
Matrix Space: https://matrix.to/#/#leftyreadmain:matrix.org
Join the Main chat for general discussion, and the /kritik/ chat for the Capital group.

Come /read/ with us!