/edu/ - Education

Hello, I was petting my dog earlier today, he's pretty old, and it got me wondering - why, evolutionarily speaking, do animals or organisms in general (including humans) keep on living after they are no longer able to reproduce due to age?

Wouldn't it be better for the survival of the species if they just died after they couldn't have kids anymore? Evolutionarily they have no purpose right?

Is it just so they can help to raise offspring? But elderly animals continue to consume resources that could go towards young, so isn't it still a net loss overall?

Thread for PDFs related to the 'Anti-Anglo reading group - left deviation'

There are people who spend their entire lives reading Hegel and still manage to come out empty handed.


ITT we discuss the great thinker, Karl Marx's teacher, and he on who's shadow we walk:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1. What are good things to read/view to get an understanding of Hegel from a philosophical neophyte?

2. What service can Hegel's philosophy provide us today?

3. What an be done to make Hegel more accessible to the masses? Why is it so unpenetrable?

What did Marx think about democratic Athens?
What did Marx say about George Washington?
What about Lutheranism?
What about primitive communism?

Everyone from Oxford to Britannica has their own reference works on Marx's own ideas, but which one is the most responsive and comprehensive for actual Marxists to use? Is Hal Draper usable as an encyclopedia? If not, then who?

I want to understand his practical takes as well as his abstract ideas. Book worship is surely an evil to be avoided, but total ignorance of the man's own perspectives is one I hold far worse.

If you know French or German, please contribute a chapter to /leftypol/'s first crowdsourced translation project! This project started on >>691.

The book is Karl Kautsky's history of the French Revolution, originally published as Die Klassengegensätze im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution in 1889. Coming from the "Pope of Marxism", as Kautsky was then known, this text likely had an immense influence on Lenin and other revolutionaries of his day. It was approved by Engels himself, and may have been foundational in establishing the Marxist theory of bourgeois revolution, yet it has never been translated into English. The original German is available here: https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/kautsky/1908/frev/index.html and an old French translation is available here: https://www.marxists.org/francais/kautsky/works/1889/00/antagonismes-table.htm

What makes this work especially good for us to translate is that it's relatively short - just around 60 pages in total, divided into 10 chapters. With each chapter being 5-7 pages each, it is conceivable to translate a chapter in one day's volunteer work. Comrade Akko has already translated the preface, and is working on chapter 1. That leaves 9 chapters to complete:

Preface: Complete!
Chapter 1: Second draft complete (French)
Chapter 2: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 3: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 4: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 5: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading complete (English)
Chapter 6: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 7: Draft complete (French) - Proofreading in progress (English) - Proofreader needed
Chapter 8: Complete! (Copyrighted work, permission secured)
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Post Copy pastas, videos and books which debunk common Fascist, Liberal talking points which are repeated often.

I thought leftypol could use a general /lit/ thread, maybe mainly to discuss fiction and poetry and everything in between since theory and philosophy is widely discussed in many other threads. And I guess aspiring writers could also ask for feedback and advice in this thread.

I would like to start off by asking for some recommendations of leftypol approved Latin American authors and works. Stuff I've already read and enjoyed include: Cien años de soledad, Crónica de una muerte anunciada, Pedro Páramo, El llano en llamas and Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte.

Maybe /hobby/ would be more fit for a thread like this, but /edu/ could do with some more activity, I reckon.

Was the Meiji restoration and "restoring power to the emperor" a good or bad thing in 18th century Japan for the peasants? It marked the upper class revolution that caused the samurai feudal system to transition into a capitalist system. (Which ultimately turned into a racist imperialist empire that tried to invade and oppress all of its neighbors in Asia in a sort of fascist system, and as Japan lost the war the people starved and suffered greatly.)

I just found this photograph btw. Samurai didn't look nearly as impressive as I thought they would, and that hairdo is "objectively ugly."

There were a lot of peasant revolutions/movements that tried to go against the samurai but they all ultimately failed so no one except historians talk about them. Unfortunately too, the people who study Japanese history appear to be mostly weebs who romanticize the samurai so much that you never get to hear about the peasents' movements.

Any one has any reads on atheism that are not just "I hecking love science" like the new atheism movement was?
I remember seeing a book about atheism and german idealism; or idealism in general but I can't seem to find it.
Either way let's just talk about atheism in general.

This is part of the reading series we're doing in the Continental Floppa reading group formerly the anti-Anglo reading group. The plan is to read 1 chapter per week (breaking up chapter 3 into the 3 lectures). This is a selection of lectures and essays by Louis Althusser on the topics of philosophy relative to science and politics. This thread is for discussion and to invite people to the reading group, which can be found here https://matrix.to/#/!mjlMGagFTDhvgxMWhY:matrix.org/

Our schedule has recently changed. We now discuss on Sundays.
UTC (UTC +0) 19:00 (5pm) Universal time
EDT (UTC -4) 15:00 (3pm) Eastern US (daylight savings time)
CEST (UTC +2) 21:00 (7pm) Central Europe (summer time)

The next session will be Sunday 27th June, covering essay 1:
Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation: Ideology and Ideological Struggle