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/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
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 No.3250[Reply]

There is a lot of confusion on what fascism is and what it means.

So I think It may be useful to clear things out by making a little general so it can be properly defined and pointed out.

I will start by laying some popular questions about it:
-What is Fascism? (or who best defined it)
-What is function of Fascism?
-Is Trump fascist? (if not, why and where he stands instead)
-What (if it exist) is Post-modern Fascism (/leftypol/s sugarboy Prolekult talked about it)
-Are there Fascist still around/what would take them for to rise up again?
-Does QAnon have any Fascist pararels?
-Some post-1945 historical examples of Fascism.
-Economics of Fascism.
-Flavours of Fascism (based on different material conditions, nations etc.).
-Fascist relations to Imperialism, can Fascist country be Imperialist?
12 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.10367

>>3273
I think you have it right that there are two aspects in fascism, but you get some things wrong about historical fascism

I 100% agree with the idea that the material reality of fascism is essentially a completion of liberalism, as carried out by the bourgeoisie. It is the annihilation of the individual in the name of the social body (as represented by the nation, which is represented by the state or singular leader himself). It is also in some ways anti-capitalist in that it formally subjects the economy to political control, but the nature of that control will always tend to be in favor of whatever bourgeois interests are ruling the system. This is not paradoxical, since companies have to exist in the context of a whole economy, and so in order to shape themselves as they see fit, they need the freedom to impose on all others. This is achieved through political control of the economy. In this way it's even materially progressive. The US deepstate is currently upholding these ideas in a socially progressive veneer. Hillary Clinton, by this definition, is a fascist.

But the other side which is equally necessary to fully understand fascism is it's irrationalism. It is an answer to the problem of modernity. It's a failed answer, but tbh as far as things go it's pretty advanced I think. Fascism is for the rejection of this modern period of generalized nihilism and overturning by the installation of an "eternal" state which is to faithfully represent the true national Spirit. It's at it's core Idealist. It's similar to anarchism maybe? In that they can both be idealist and copes with the problem of modernity. But other than that they're pretty unrelated. Though between these ideas there is a sort of voluntarism or libertinism for the leadership, who are to have full artistic freedom over society. This makes sense, since the state needs it's solidity recognized in order to "represent" (or more accurately, displace) the reality of the individual citizen.

And it's not so much necessarily racist, as trying to worship an aesthetic rendering of their understanding of their particular national being. This is why I say it's more advanced. They fail because of their worship of an aesthetic representation and the negation of the individual (imagining an antagonism between real concrete individual, and the society they make), but they are correct to hoPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

 No.10368

>>3364
i'll take back a total criticism of your idea of them being reactionary anarchists, but I think that there's a lot more nuance there to be had. But then it becomes a job of charting out the different tendencies around there….

The common factor of consistency though is their position as a cope for liberalism, they rest on nihilism, which is dysfunctional, and so they cover that up with idealism. The nihilism is at it's core always an active nihilism, so there's a current of overturning and savagery under their "beautiful idea" which they want to implement against reality.

 No.10369

>>3365
this book is pretty neat. but it sadly goes on a literally dictionary definition of fascism, instead of investigating how fascism was for people living in it, and what they thought and did and said, etc. I wish we could have seen a parallel of how fascist subjects viewed their society to compare to our view of our society…

 No.10381

>>10367
This is one of the few posts on here (or anywhere really) that actually understands fascism and isn't just the usual liberal claptrap/reflexive definition-mongering. You actually know its philosophical basis beyond some vague notion of 'racism'. One thing I would add is that, because of the idealism and its relation to the spirit, as well as the totalism of the state, fascism is also something which keenly regards the 'potential' within each member of its national identity. Fascism is a strange ideology in this respect, because on the one hand, it is intensely hierarchical, but on the other, the hierarchy is a sort of 'fluid' one, rather than a fixed or essentialized one (insofar as we are exempt nazism as being apart from the other strains of 'proper' fascism); the 'hero in every man' ambition is an extension of its concept of spirit, and its national totalism, a collective totality of assimilated particulars, wrought with its tendency towards the equalizing potentiation of each person: the power they have in themselves to become something more. But in doing so, they assert their own hierarchical sovereignty under the same state which subsumes and potentiates them all with an equal sense of identity. The economically related stance of corporatism is precisely the attempt to reconcile the seeming contradiction already enmeshed within liberalism, that problem of 'equality yet competition', and it (fascism's evolved 'solution' to the problem) does so through the leveraging force of a national belonging which promises all members of society to be contributive members, contributive in the sense of having some functional purpose regardless of standing, whilst simultaneously encouraging upwards mobility nonetheless. Corporatism was the synthesis of maintaining the 'lower' end of the strata without dehumanizing it, via the promise of unlimited internal possibility and the valuing of all members. In this way, the caricature of communism most people mistakenly preconceive 'communism is about some naive sense of equality' is actually much more at home within fascism's philosophical implications and doctrine than it is within real communism, which has little to do with such an assertion necessarily. Gentile even outright states in 'theory of mind as pure act': "Think of what you wish to be, and you can become it". His seminal work 'on education' is similar. This is the Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

 No.10403

>>10381
woah cool post

this really fills in the idea that fascism is a more total reckoning of the liberal idea of a singular individual, the difference being that the fascist state is supposed to represent the particular national interests rather than claim some universality.

Also you touched on a point i havent really reconciled yet (due to lack of knowledge), which is the relation of the two faces of fascism, the material and the ideological. At first i assumed there was no necessary tie, but now I think they probably are very intertwined somehow, but i can't say exactly why… my hangup is just that basically we already are getting a fascism materially, but without the ideology. So will we develop a fascist ideology to go along? Or does neoconservatism among the elites constitute this fascist ideology? IMO neoconservatism is less advanced than fascism (because it still keeps liberalism's ideal of universalism, while in its real material character, promoting the interests of one nation… i'll take a guess and say that you face off neocons against welfare "socialist" democrats and you'll basically develop nazism out of it… all the more easily because no one actually gets acquainted with the real philosophy of nazism and just learns "concentration camps bad, racism bad" instead) but it seems to be bringing about a similar material state of things either way.

anyways, this lays the groundwork for dialectical-materialism and a society which is both oriented inwards and with a knowledge of its particular nature, but also which sees the exactly reciprocal relationship it has with its people, particular individuals, who fully embody society in their being. But alas, no one even cares about this shit it seems like….



 No.5935[Reply]

Is there a book I can read on the economy of the Roman Empire and the social classes of the time? Anything that goes into deep analysis or extensive stuff.
11 posts omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.6826

This work is a marxist classic mostly on Ancient Greece but it also talks about Rome.

 No.10389

>Roman Empire
Specifically roman empire or you are refering to rome since 753 BC?

 No.10390

>>5938
just because the word is generally derived doesn’t mean they’re literally identical classes. also “small scale wage labor” isn’t capitalism. i don’t even know why i’m bothering to correct you when absolutely void-brained takes like yours will continue to be regular on here

 No.10393

File: 1650254579550.pdf (242.09 KB, 197x255, two_pages.pdf)

daniel de leon on the gracchi brothers and the late republic

 No.10396

Did someone already mention
"The assasination of Julias Caesar" by michael parenti its a very interesting and pleasant read



 No.6857[Reply]

Hey all.

I am looking for recommendations for podcasts on history and or agroecology.

But also this can be a thread about anything educational that you really enjoy
2 posts omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.6862

>>6860
alright, now which ones are actually good?

 No.6863

>>6862
most of them

 No.6865

>>6862
I personally found proles of the roundtable to be the best, before their collapse. Their new podcast is good too

 No.6880

>>6865
>before their collapse
What happened?

Also about "from alpha to omega" and "general intellect unit"

 No.10363

Hey! I realize this is kind of off-topic but I needed to ask.

Does operating a well-established website like yours take a large
amount of work? I am completely new to operating a blog however
I do write in my diary daily. I'd like to start a blog so I can share my experience and thoughts online.
Please let me know if you have any kind of suggestions or tips for new aspiring bloggers.
Appreciate it!
ក្រដាសប្រាក់ 100 ដុល្លារក្លែងក្លាយ
លុយដុល្លារក្លែងក្លាយលក់នៅតាកែវ



File: 1649797717244.png (652.11 KB, 610x864, ClipboardImage.png)

 No.10362[Reply]

Revolution via an electoral path will never happen, it can be a tool but never the means.

Post infographics, tactics etc about protesting/rioting, tensions are rising and the contradictions are sharper then ever.

 No.10382




File: 1645556468376-0.png (179.76 KB, 580x386, office.png)

File: 1645556468376-1.jpg (412.71 KB, 1042x1600, althusser-colors.jpg)

 No.9862[Reply]

Hey /edu/! A new reading group has recently formed in the /read/ chat rooms. This time dedicated to the works of Louis Althusser. We should be starting soon, our first meeting is planned for March 6, Sunday. The plan is to work through some of Althusser's books, starting with For Marx, which is his most introductory work. We would like to invite anyone on this board to join us for the reading.

>Why Althusser?


We consider Althusser to have been one of the most important Marxists of the second half of the 20th century. His identification of the 'epistemological break' in Marx was a major innovation, and most modern readings of Marx, centered around the discontinuities and ruptures inherent to his work are all in some way indebted to Althusser. We consider that his attempt at reconstructing Historical Materialism during a time of a major theoretical crisis of Marxism, and his innovations towards Marxist science, are of utmost value. But we also recognize that Althusser's interventions were never isolated from practical politics - his consideration that ‘Philosophy represents the class struggle in theory’ being fundamental here. His theoretical work was always conceived as an intervention into not only the politics of the PCF, but of the international communist movement as a whole. As he would later say:

>I would never have written anything were it not for the Twentieth Congress and Khrushchev’s critique of Stalinism and the subsequent liberalisation. But I would never have written these books if I had not seen this affair as a bungled destalinisation, a right-wing destalinisation which instead of analyses offered us only incantations; which instead of Marxist concepts had available only the poverty of bourgeois ideology. My target was therefore clear: these humanist ravings, these feeble dissertations on liberty, labour or alienation which were the effects of all this among French Party intellectuals. And my aim was equally clear: to make a start on the first left-wing critique of Stalinism, a critique that would make it possible to reflect not only on Khrushchev and Stalin but also on Prague and Lin Piao: that would above all help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West.


So, anyone interested?
16 posts and 6 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.10091

Here's Monthly Review's version of Lenin & Philosophy. It comes with some other essays included:
< Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon (Feb 1968)
< Lenin and Philosophy (Feb 1968)
< < Appendix
< Preface to Capital Volume One (Mar 1969)
< < The Rudiments of a Critical Bibliography
< Lenin before Hegel (April 1969)
< Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes toward an Investigation) (Jan-Apr 1969)
And in the appendix
< Freud and Lacan (Jan 1964, corrected Feb 1969)
< A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre (Apr 1966)
< Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract (Aug 1966)

 No.10093

Next meeting we will discuss the rest of essay #5 in For Marx.

 No.10126

copied from >>10124 (might have thought that was the current thread)
Althusser Corrects Marx by Ernest Mandel: https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1971/01/althusser.html

I recommend people read this.

 No.10176

Since we discussed this current text as a potential introduction to philosophy and Marxism, here is an even more basic introductory text. It outlines the progression of philosophy from classical philosophy through Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx. It's an accessible primer on the philosophical side of Marxism. It would be good to follow up this text with For Marx I think because the latter helps to correct some of the common misconceptions, including those propagated by Engels in the former.

 No.10361

We finished On Marx and will be starting On The Reproduction of Capital soon! If you'd like to join, now is the time.



File: 1641513051857.png (128.17 KB, 960x748, NSDAP_Wahl_1933.png)

 No.9297[Reply]

Is there any books I can read that documents the NSDAP rise to power? Specifically from a leftist perspective or a leftist analysis? I'm specifically looking for a book that follows the events as they happen.
3 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.9331

>>9314
Hamburg, too. Hitler would rarely visit the city, because sentiments there were still broadly leftist

 No.9340

>>9330
What exactly were “junkers”, I seen that term used a lot during Marx’s writings on German society.

 No.9351

>>9340
more traditionally in general German usage, a young lesser nobleman usually without land and in military service
it was eventually adapted into a name for the Prussian aristocracy, who did own a ton of land in Prussia and swayed elections there under the Weimar republic
Hitler kind of saw them as part of the backstabbers of WWI although more passive, but they still ingratiated themselves with him and succeeded obviously

 No.9370

Despite the fact it was written by the Allies "trials of war criminals before the nuremberg military tribunals" is an incredibly well documentation of how the Nazis came to power in support of major corporations.

 No.10348

>>9312
Thanks
Know of any good books about the Great Patriotic War?



 No.9867[Reply]

Full contact martial arts

sambo, kudo karate, Marine Martial arts, army combatives, full contact karate, Chinese Sanda
no Bullshido kung fu stuff

 No.10345

anyone have a good version of Jixiao Xinshu, can't find a complete version anymore



File: 1617655547553.jpg (354.23 KB, 762x1100, PP030.jpg)

 No.5376[Reply]

Who did it? Soviets? Nazis?
Why were the polish officers killed? What was the motive for the massacre? Were they preparing a revolt?

Are the documents fake? Whose investigations are trustworthy?

Discuss
22 posts and 6 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.10230

NKVD, documents prove it and i don’t believe tankies that openly justify many other of stalin/beria’s ethnically targeted atrocities like deportations to central asia would be so surprised that bolsheviks were capable of such a thing

 No.10236

File: 1648568175009.jpg (18.25 KB, 818x123, katyn greentext.jpg)

>>10230
>documents prove it
Documents? You mean the ones that got admitted to being forgeries? Or perhaps the documents by Nazi Germany?
>tankies that openly justify many other of stalin/beria’s ethnically targeted atrocities
>deportations to central asia
<Muh tankies!
Fuck of liberal
https://manofsteel.quora.com/What-do-Stalin-supporters-think-of-his-deportations-of-ethnic-minorities-3

 No.10240

>>10236
that quora thing is basically admitting it was done systematically against certain ethnicities, but waffling pathetically around it. again don’t know why you’d even be so surprised if this is the kind of stuff you think

 No.10241

File: 1648582596698.jpg (289.67 KB, 1600x916, FDR Katyn Massacre.jpg)

>>10240
>admitting it was done systematically against certain ethnicities
>waffling
<Let me take a point out of context to portray it as admission!
You argue in bad faith and use a false narrative to try and claim another false narrative, and cry about "le evul Stalin/Beria/tankeez" in the mean time. I'd suggest going to >>>/leftypol/ or better yet reddit, those liberal echo-chambers are more your speed.
>inb4 'N-no u echochamber'
People have discussed Katyn and the debate of it being the NKVD or not before, they also discussed Soviet deportations before, this is acceptable discourse. You are engaging in dishonest fallacies, putting a slight spin on old Cold War myths and exaggerations.

 No.10337

File: 1649450320992.png (122.66 KB, 1245x450, WikipediaBeingWikipedia.png)

https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/katyn/

This is a pretty good examination of it all, It's important to note though that most Communists are able to admit mistakes and excesses commited by Socialist nations. I don't doubt that when the Soviet Union started taking in Polish officers (Most of who fought in the Polish-Soviet war) they treated them pretty badly, but the idea they spread is that one executioner (Vasily Blokhin) executed tens of thousands of Poles by himself right next to Smolensk (A city of at least a hundred thousand and all with German guns and bullets) and nobody knew till the Nazis came by is just insane.



File: 1608528010941.jpg (40.95 KB, 554x380, trotsky.jpg)

 No.733[Reply][Last 50 Posts]

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
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.
136 posts and 60 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.8420


 No.10301

File: 1649180939099.pdf (30.83 KB, 197x255, Aizenberg.pdf)

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread for discussing this type of stuff, but since it involves dialectics, i figure it would fit.

But, honestly asking, what is the point of studying dialectics? I read PDF related, and didn't get much from it. This Aizenberg guy even claims Hegel used the Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis triad (i thought that was Fichetean meme?).

 No.10334

REJECT METAPHYSICAL NONSENSE OF "MATERIALIST" DIALECTICS WHICH IS NOTHING BUT ANOTHER EXPRESSION OF IDEALISM, EMBRACE HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.
https://www.anti-dialectics.co.uk/

 No.10335

>>919
https://www.lacan.com/zizgorgias.htm

Here zizek mentions the idea of a dialectical mode of thinking or something. I generally agree that dialectics is more about presenting things in their fullness, contingency, process, and necessary movement, but this was a neat little thing. Basically just this part:

>There are, roughly speaking, two philosophical approaches to an antagonistic constellation of either/or: either one opts for one pole against the other (Good against Evil, freedom against oppression, morality against hedonism, etc.), or one adopts a "deeper" attitude of emphasizing the complicity of the opposites, and of advocating a proper measure or the unity. Although Hegel's dialectic seems a version of the second approach (the "synthesis" of opposites), he opts for an unheard-of THIRD version: the way to resolve the deadlock is neither to engage oneself in fighting for the "good" side against the "bad" one, nor in trying to bring them together in a balanced "synthesis," but in opting for the BAD side of the initial either/or. Of course, this "choice of the worst" fails, but in this failure, it undermines the entire field of the alternative and thus enables us to overcome its terms.


I think there's also something to be said for a dialectics which privileges overcoming deadlock and active thought, and another which comes to view the relationship/unity of opposites as necessary and in some way able to be thought of in a self-contained way. But this is just a feeling. It's also interesting to me that in Engel's laws, they can't be easily lumped into one thing. Negation of negation, quality into quantity, and unity of opposites - they're on both sides, the unity sees the opposites as united, whereas the quantity into quality and negation of negation sees the overcoming of deadlock and the specific form of transformation (quantity into quality). I'm just a dialectics lightweight tho so anyways take this zizek essay

 No.10336

>>10334
fam this is unreadable omg



 No.2320[Reply]

Is mathematics invented, discovered or both?
49 posts and 4 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.10118

>>10099
sry, or oranges are already fake as fuck, see this highly underrated comment (not mine, just based and noumenon pilled):
>>5821

 No.10151

the question isn't very interesting. there isn't very much practical difference between invention and discovery in the first place. to invent and to discover are both to unveil something novel. it's why european settlers refer to things like "the discovery of america" which just as well be described as the invention of colonial states in the western hemisphere. was deep sea navigation discovered or invented? the astrolabe was invented, but doesn't work if you haven't discovered the relationship between sun declination and latitude.

 No.10296

>>2320
Mathematics is an expression of truth. If you look at the various branches of pure mathematics, many don’t even remotely resemble what you probably had in mind (high school algebra or the basic college curriculum of calculus and linear algebra). Mathematics is similar to a programming language. You have some set of primitives, some set of operations you can perform, and from there you begin to derive the consequences of the operations you’ve defined. I guess you could say in that sense that mathematics is “invented” or “contrived”. Whether it is “real” or not depends entire on whether the system you have defined is useful for solving any real problems. Like if I define a logic about Barbie dolls, I define what properties Barbie has, what operations I can perform on her (brush her hair or undress her), etc… with a little effort we can make such a logic self consistent and valid. You obviously realize immediately that we probably can’t gain any useful or meaningful knowledge from that, so is it real math or not? I don’t see why not.

 No.10297

I just realized what point I was trying to make. Mathematics is obviously invented. It is just a framework within which you can systematize your reasoning about a given question or problem. However, the conclusions you derive from within that framework are discoveries. So a given branch of mathematics or logic is just a method for making discoveries.

 No.10333

math is invented. to say that math is "discovered" is idealism



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