/edu/ - Education

Why must've the Universe had a beginning? Why couldn't it have just been? Matter in motion since forever, always changing - as Heraclitus, Descartes, Engels, Lenin and other materialist philosophers postulated. Makes more sense than anything else.
>doesn't fall into the trap of an immovable mover
>doesn't fall into the trap of making matter out to be immutable since it is always changing
>removes the "I" from the equation, where consciousness just becomes another form matter in motion (electricity in our brains)
Why do the professional philosophers insist on arguing about idealistic nonsense when the two simple axioms
>matter always existed
>matter was always in motion
Solve all philosophical problems and leave only their practical solutions - i.e. the natural and social sciences, something tangible with results, to be studied? Is it because if the theory starts requiring practice, they lose their cushy jobs and pseudo-intellectuals on this board who jack off on structuralism, post-Marxism &c. would have to start doing manual labor to prove their points?

I feel like one of the biggest obstacles to understanding Marx's most crucial works is that he writes for an audience that he assumes already knows a ton of context, which makes sense considering his own context as a journalist for revolutionary workers on the streets themselves. It still makes those writings confusing to anyone that isn't an academic that has the privilege of having absorbed context. So, what are some good history books that can fill in that gap?

Some specific topics:
—English political economy from Adam Smith to the repeal of the Corn Laws
—Early communist party (Cabet, Blanqui, League of the Just, Communist Correspondence Committee, etc.)
—1848 Revolutions and aftermath
—Napoleon III's coup
—Paris Commune
—First International activities and drama
—General 19th century European history

I found this on the Paris Commune a while ago, pretty decent: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mitchell-abidor-voices-of-the-paris-commune

Bourgeois economists embraced labor theory of value (which originated from Adam Smith of all people) until Marx. Marx got bourgeois economists to abandon the labor theory of value because he took it to its logical conclusion of the proletarian revolution against the bourgeois class dictatorship. As a result of bourgeois economists abandoning the labor theory of value in order to distance mainstream economics from Marx's conclusions, they began to embrace quackery like marginal utility theory and the subjective theory of value.

Enough background. Let me get to the point. I was wondering, are there any books that outline the differences in vocabulary used by bourgeois economists before and after Marx? They did a lot of linguistic obfuscation after Marx, and it might be helpful to get a breakdown of that, because it's hard to even tell what bourgeois economists are talking about sometimes if your vocabulary is already marxist, or vice-versa, if you learned "mainstream" economics first and then pick up Marx 2nd. Sometimes it can feel like you're speaking two different languages, because the technical glossaries of each approach to viewing the world differ so much.

I plan to study this book over the next week starting tonight or tomorrow. Anyone wanna join the read? I'd wager ~50-70pgs (relative to my edition) per day is doable for most. So my plan then roughly is
>The three forewords, Intro (What Herr Duhring promises) and then chapters III-VIII
>From VIII to XIV
>Second part Political Economy I-V
>Then V-X
>Third ch. Socialism in its entirety

Links:
https://ia800304.us.archive.org/0/items/antidhringherr00enge/antidhringherr00enge.pdf
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm

If anyone thinks a study guide would be better so we follow some main points, be free to post it or suggest it. I'm not a fan of structured studies because then I read the text with a certain goal in mind instead of understanding it.

Greetings, comrades.

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Why aren't you a chaos marxist?
https://chaosmarxism.neocities.org/

"The blame for this falls solely upon the wretched conditions in Germany, in consequence of which cobweb-spinning eclectic flea-crackers had taken possession of the chairs of philosophy-"

What the fuck is a flea-cracker?

Thoughts on this open-source US history textbook?
https://www.americanyawp.com/text/16-capital-and-labor/

>The socialist movement drew from a diverse constituency. Party membership was open to all regardless of race, gender, class, ethnicity, or religion. Many prominent Americans, such as Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, and Jack London, became socialists. They were joined by masses of American laborers from across the United States: factory workers, miners, railroad builders, tenant farmers, and small farmers all united under the red flag of socialism. Many united with labor leader William D. “Big Bill” Haywood and other radicals in 1905 to form the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the “Wobblies,” a radical and confrontational union that welcomed all workers, regardless of race or gender.32 Others turned to politics.

>The Socialist Party of America (SPA), founded in 1901, carried on the American third-party political tradition. Socialist mayors were elected in thirty-three cities and towns, from Berkeley, California, to Schenectady, New York, and two socialists—Victor Berger from Wisconsin and Meyer London from New York—won congressional seats. All told, over one thousand socialist candidates won various American political offices. Julius A. Wayland, editor of the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, proclaimed that “socialism is coming. It’s coming like a prairie fire and nothing can stop it . . . you can feel it in the air.”33 By 1913 there were 150,000 members of the Socialist Party and, in 1912, Eugene V. Debs, the Indiana-born Socialist Party candidate for president, received almost one million votes, or 6 percent of the total.34

>Over the following years, however, the embrace of many socialist policies by progressive reformers, internal ideological and tactical disagreements, a failure to dissuade most Americans of the perceived incompatibility between socialism and American values, and, especially, government oppression and censorship, particularly during and after World War I, ultimately sank the party. Like the Populists, however, socialists had tapped into a deep well of discontent, and their energy and organizing filtered out into American culture and American politics.

I plan on checking out Kotkin's work on Stalin, which I'm told is informative and you can pick out the brainworms. And Trotsky himself wrote a biography on Stalin.

The popular Mao biography is the one by Jung Chang, but that sounds like a pure polemic. 'Mao: A Reinterpretation' by Feigon is the only pro-Mao one I can find.

Post video recordings of lectures and announcements for online lectures.

>inb4 schitzos like peterson or other rightwingers
this is /leftypol/ faggot
>inb4 Richard D. Wolff
all his lectures i have seen so far are just very basic stuff if you find some more advanced stuff post it

I want to focus this thread on philosophy, history and political economy on an academic level.