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'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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I've been scratching my head about this for a while. I can't quite wrap my head around the cause of mass shootings. I'm inclined to chalk it up to burger brainrot, but there's not much unique about modern America that explains why this is a problem now but not historically. Is it alienation? Is it a symptom of an empire in decline, and if so, why isn't it more prevalent in other decaying countries that also have lots of guns like Russia or the dessicated husk of Yugoslavia? What gives, Leftypol?
19 posts and 3 image replies omitted.

>>15962
…Based take?

It is alienation. The types of discrimination that are most common in capitalistic societies such as racism & misogyny lead to bullying in the young population, and the problems escalate from there. The reason it’s gotten worse or happened at all in a country like Albania is because of its proximity to the empire and its ambitions, i.e. Kosovo.

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stochastic terrorism

Agricultural and industrial collapse in the US heartland beginning in the late 20th century




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Any thoughts on this? For a quick primer, cliodynamics is basically quantitative historical analysis. Using what amounts to big data analytics, it builds computer models of macrohistorical trends to identify patterns and predict developments. By this method Turchin himself has claimed to have discovered certain formulas for civil unrest, though Marxist theorists could have told you most of that without the models. He claims that many years ago he predicted that civilization would enter an age of instability starting in the 2020s.

Some of cliodynamic's findings are as follows: Societies tend to function in circular centennial patterns of uptrends and downtrends, “an alternation of integrative and disintegrative phases lasting for roughly a century” as he puts it . The three most robust predictive metrics for societal collapse are a wealth disparity and declining wages, "elite overproduction" (too many highly educated people with not enough positions of power for them to fill), and an increase in public debt. Another is what he calls the "wealth pump" , where wealth is funneled up to the rich away from the poor, which usually marks the end of the integrative phase and the beginning of the disintegrative phase.
He claims to identify four major power sectors, the militaristic, financial, bureaucratic and ideological, which in good times, remain aligned, but begin to fall out of joint with one another and begin to squabble.

In my opinion, I like data based models. However, a model is not an explanatory theory. It is inert. And in that sense, Turchin does not go far enough. He has snapshots, but does not tie them together, probably because he wouldn't like where it would lead him: to Marx.
8 posts omitted.

>>16413
>By this method Turchin himself has claimed to have discovered certain formulas for civil unrest, though Marxist theorists could have told you most of that without the models
When scientists and analytic philosophers discover the same shit as political theorists and continental philosophers several centuries later.

More reasons to be well-versed in disciplines outside of STEM. Take that, scientologists!

>>16422
It's the same deal with math.

i came across turchin a long time ago because i was a neet with lots of time on my hands obsessed with patter and cycles in history, thinking i could find some secret patterns to help me tell the future.
Whats funny is that he uses science to analyze history but it comes off like some weirdo shit

>>16420
I understand the point that you are making through irony, but these theories are not really about the structural causes of unemployment, but about the consequences and some vague correlations
doesn't seem very useful but I guess the guy is filling his white paper quota or some other grift

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The difference between pseudoscience and science is that scientists can make predictions that actually come true.
What has he predicted that came true?
Great, now please put it where the AGW models belong.

>He claims that many years ago he predicted that civilization would enter an age of instability starting in the 2020s

I never saw as many people conforming to commands given by the ruling class as in 2020.



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some soviet defector to Canada named Igor Gouzenko wrote a self-sucking autobiography called The Fall of a Titan after defecting to the West and exposing a soviet spy ring immediately after WW2. Some people point to this as the start of the cold war in public consciousness since he did this 3 days after WW2 ended, basically creating an "our soviet allies betrayed us!!!" narrative in the public opinion of countries like the USA.

But what I find really interesting about his book is that it's basically like some 1940s Yeonmi Park type shit.

This guy rose through the ranks of soviet society for his academic achievement, and lived better than most people, and was already staying in Canada for his job, and had a lot of material comforts. He ultimately defected because he wanted to make money being a professional defector.

The thing about his book I find funniest is its cover. The publisher at the time wanted to put a picture of Stalin on the cover, but for some reason they ended up with a picture of Maxim Gorky, who had already been dead for over a decade. Why? Not sure. Maybe they found Stalin too handsome. Maybe they confused a photo of Gorky for a photo of Stalin. Maybe they just thought the cover would go harder with a picture of Gorky.

This high profile soviet defector went on TV wearing what looks like a klan hood, brandishing a book whose cover is Gorky for some reason.

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can't even find this on libgen



 

Hmm… Sounds familiar….

Michael Parenti argues that the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was not motivated by humanitarian concerns, but rather was driven by economic interests and a desire to establish military control over the region. He critiques Western media coverage of the conflict and argues that the West was complicit in the violence. Ultimately, he concludes that the NATO bombing campaign only exacerbated ethnic divisions within Yugoslavia and set back any potential progress towards peace in the Balkan region.


• Parenti claims that NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia was motivated primarily by geopolitical considerations and a desire to establish military bases throughout Eastern Europe. He sees little evidence of genuine concern for protecting civilians or promoting democracy in the region.
• He accuses Western media outlets of providing biased coverage that painted Bosnian Muslims as innocent victims and demonized Serbs as brutish aggressors. This framing, according to Parenti, helped pave the way for NATO military action.
• While acknowledging the crimes committed by Serb forces against civilian populations, Parenti argues that similar war crimes occurred at the hands of Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) armed groups. Yet these actions garnered far less attention and condemnation from Western leaders and media outlets.
• Parenti contends that NATO's bombardment of Serbia resulted in numerous civilian casualties and failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting stability or deterring future aggression. Instead, he suggests, the attacks only further destabilized the region and contributed to long-term suffering among ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire.
• Parenti believes that NATO's intervention marked a dangerous precedent for unilateral use of force without clear legal authority or universal support from the global community. This trend, in his
• He emphasizes the deep historical roots of conflicts in the Balkans and the ways in which European powers played significant roles in shaping regional boundaries and identities over centuries. Understanding these dynamics helps explain why contemporary events unfolded as they did.
• Parenti criticizes liberal intellectuals who endorse imperial policies under the guise of supporting human rights or anti-fascism. He urges readers to challenge such facile justifications and insPost too long. Click here to view the full text.
18 posts and 6 image replies omitted.

>>17540
forgot to add: this class was concentrated in the capital/north, while the coast was underdeveloped. Coast is where most soldiers/sailors for the A-H navy came from. The coast is also where a large portion of partisans came from. 1st and 2nd Dalmatian Brigade was instrumental in Bosnia and repelling the Axis forces.

What helped the partisans in Croatia was that Croatia was unified in name only (still is). In the middle, the part separating the capital and Slavonija, from Istria and coast was where a lot of Serbs came hundreds of years ago. Hence the best part to move materiel and personnel from north to coast was never fully controlled by Ustashe, saboteurs were a nuisance and Nazi Germany had to commit more and more forces to quash the saboteurs. It all turned around in 1943 after the failures of operations Weiss and Schwarz, and the failure of Nazis to take Stalingrad. Ustashe battalions had to be sent to the eastern front. Then it just became a matter of when, not if.

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>>17524
>I wanna say racist shit, and not get banned for it
>I know, I'll put on a Tankie flag!
>banned anyway

>>17539
i'm always surprised when anons have such extensive knowledge of individual nations .but then again i'm a stupid ass burger so that's probably why

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can you spot what's wrong with this pic?

>>17544
calling Bosnians Muslims? counting Montenegrins as separate from Serbs? ditto for Macedonians maybe?



 

how has the board missed the work of Vivek Chibber?
>dunks on pomo leftists
>dunks on thirdworldists
>dunks on defeatist Christoid Western Marxists and their deathism and glorification of suffering
>the reason India and Africa are so poorly developed isn't because they're overexploited but because the peasantry has not had their land taken from them, that is, because they haven't been exploited enough
<Rescuing the Left From Its Obsession With Culture — Vivek Chibber
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=EQ5gLuk06TU
<Slavoj Zizek vs Vivek Chibber: What Is Ideology?
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=rLNSzxzEbKU
this man is the personification of this board and I refuse to believe otherwise
198 posts and 31 image replies omitted.

We need to get Chibber on here just for the spectacle of watching the guy verbally slap down the schizos and crypto-reactionaries on here

>>14125
>Lenin here is saying that socialism is being consummated in the west by the exploitation of peripheral nations.
Yet in no moment western nations ever had vanguard parties taking power for good, achieving any control over the MoP or establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, worse, socialism lost power in these nations and replaced with a wish to become a social democracy that don't break with any relation of capitalism, especially imperialism.
lenin here is just wrong that the exploitation of the periphery would bring a revolution in the west, a hundred years have passed and this never happened, with and without the USSR here.

>>14127
Literally the vanguard party in America that led it to develop socialism with the use of colonial proletariat exploitation for the benefit of the homeland was the Democratic Party that led the new deal to cultivate the social fabric of American workers being accustomed to white picket fences and 75K annual salaries and whatnot. Furthermore, the rate of profit has consistently been falling as you know since you are on this site, this realistically means that profit planning is becoming a reactionary way to conduct economics, and more and more firms in America are abandoning profit planning to just maintain their monopolies on the world market which they use to feed their homeland. This is America becoming socialist. It’s just not the same socialism as the USSR had built, it’s more of a bourgeois socialism.

>>14128
>bourgeois socialism

>>14129
Yes it’s literally in the communist manifesto you dumb retard. Marx talks about like eleven types of socialism.



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Wouldn't it be a mess if we couldn't exchange things?
Do we have examples of what a communist, money-less world would be like?

I get that the world is supposed to be moneyless, and that ultimately any world where we exchange commodities would be capitalistic, but I just can't grasp how that is even possible.
25 posts and 2 image replies omitted.

>>19824
nice bait

>>19797
>Do we have examples of what a communist, money-less world would be like?
The average household.

>>19824
You use a different definition of state than Marxists.
For Marxists, a state is a tool used to suppress classes for the benefit of one class. If we have a global state, with no more classes, it's no longer a state. What this means is that it no longer needs to stand above society to oppress certain classes and becomes something hardly recognisable as a coherent state.
The state remains a state of there are outside bourgoies forces trying to undermine it.

>>19827
to add upon this anons definition, state and govs are two different things in marxism. In marxism, after the withering away of the state, there will still be an administrative body with laws, public service and etc. Its just that it wont be a state since it wont be used for class oppression or control.

>>19800
That already happens. It's called being rich



 

I just finished reading it and I think it is a great book. But what do you anons think about it?
Is this work racist and reactionary or does it tells the reality about the African scramble, what is your perspective. And if you have not read it, I strongly recommend you guys to read it as soon as possible.
18 posts and 6 image replies omitted.

>>17328
>It's adjacent to the "Africans were enslaving each other!" type of argument tbh.
agreed, i actually say as much a bit further down in the post but i don't blame you for reaching that part, it was a bit long winded lol

>>17326
>matter of quantity not quality tho
the Holocaust isn't unique in quantity even in the context of WW2. operation Barbarossa beats it handily. lib historians don't count the latter despite its clear genocidal intent, because it happened to dirty gommie slavs. the colonization of the Americas outdoes both
the industrial and calculated nature of the Holocaust is what sets it apart I think. very German
>>17327
lib historians are incapable of this kind of analysis, especially in the current postmodern period

>>17312
>>17311
pretty sure conrad wrote the book after witnessing atrocities in the Belgian Congo

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>>17331
>Belgian Congo
oh god, that mess

>>17332
>let's give him a hand, people
lmao



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Did Falangists and National Syndicalists switch allegiance to the Republicans following Franco's control of the JONS labor union?
>>I have encountered Spanish Flangeits and National Syndicalists who dislike Franco and support Marxism-Leninism.
- Some of these individuals have read Marx and Lenin and believe that ideologically loyal members of the JONS joined the Republicans to protest Franco's takeover of the Union.

>>the only case I have found of this being true was Ramiro Ledesma Ramos who was later shot by the CNT apart from that can't find any other sources so I am here to ask you anons if you can find any other sources of this happening.

<<also, I had to read their Retraded theory ew.
10 posts and 3 image replies omitted.

>>13918
>>1484268
>>1484266
Ok we get it holy shit

>>13919 i was fixing my spelling's

>>13919
because i am not English

>>13916
Franco let the Natsyns exist becaue they were popular due to German and Italy influence on the whole Europe during the early 20th century. When Franco saw that the fascism ship was sinking, he purged the Natsyns and he became more of a classic strong-man military religious dictator. During WW2 Franco even wore suits and stuff to imitate Hitler.

>>13911 Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Decree_(Spain,_1937)
Franco forcibly merged all Nationalist factions of the Spanish Civil War into one party that retained the name and symbols of the the Falange but was no longer an ideological monolith



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Is Michael Parenti a leftist worth reading or is there someone who does what he does better? I've heard people saying there are better Marxist historians but they don't seem to ever cite any. If I should bother whit him which works are best?
47 posts and 5 image replies omitted.

>>15478
Maybe not arguing specific policy, but the man certainly critiques policy while alluding to something better- for example, he's aware Tibet was a fucked theocracy, but he has also pointed out that it is being heavily exploited by China in general, and he believes that advocating for an independent tibet is far from the socialist line. He will criticise socialist movements, and policies- even though he supported Yugoslavia, he also knew that their policy relating to IMF loans was a dumb move- likewise, he's critical of what China is doing to Tibet and argues that people calling for Tibetan independence aren't necessarily wrong, but it shouldn't be an independant Tibet with the DaLai Llama put back in power.

https://redsails.org/friendly-feudalism/

>In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment. [45]


>Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first ch
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Why should I care what Parenti has to say?

>>15481
i dunno, why should i answer your question?

>>15462
>>15461
>>15460
The greatest Marxist work on the subject of class struggle in the Roman period is G. E. M. de Ste. Croix's "The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World", which is superior to Parenti's book because it is not primarily a study of personalities and contains the rigorous detail necessary to make a high-level analysis of the ancient slave mode of production. And it's a useful point of comparison for non-Marxist works of economic history because he takes over a hundred pages to explain the Marxist theory of class, how it applies to the ancient world, how it compares to competing theories of class and non-class explanations of social hierarchy. In this way De Ste. Croix successfully defended historical materialism as the best historiographical framework for economic and social history.
>>15453
>He does a poor job of that too, Caesar didn't even work towards the propertyless citizenry like parenti claims
I think that one indication that Parenti's analysis deviates from historical materialism is in his championing of the populares like the Gracchi brothers & Caesar. This is in contrast to De Ste. Croix who is unconcerned with these men as personalities and rather sees them as agents of social forces which spring from class struggle (1). Attached are two excerpts that illustrate the difference between the two approaches. Parenti's book is not without nuance and it does not deserve to be interpreted as a wholesale defense of Caesar (2); the purpose of the book is to be a corrective against the works of bourgeois history that uncritically utilize ancient aristocratic sources. This isn't a novel contribution because Marxist historians and bourgeois historians themselves (!) have already done so in exhaustive detail. The problem with the book is that it is framed as a study on the person of Caesar while not really being one; the net effect is to confuse and distract from more fruitful analysis and this is made evident by the way in which the book has been received in this thread and elsewhere. The two conclusions that can be drawn from thePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>15432
Im reading Blackshirts and Reds and its a huge fucking dissapointment.



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Americans are a practical people and they always say: “Time is money.” They have a whole branch of literature—unfortunately, we Chinese know very little of it—dealing with the organization of business in industries and finance, showing young Americans how to save energy and take a shortcut to success. The latter are taught all that very well, and we should learn it too.

At present we cannot permit ourselves the luxury of wasting time and energy.

We live on the borderline of two social systems: the old, capitalist system is dying, and the new, communist system is rising. In these days we cannot live as did our fathers and grandfathers. Every day brings something new, and we should be able to see it with our own eyes, to judge and decide on it. But to do that correctly, we must know a lot.

That applies to the working class in general and to every worker in particular. There is no time to work leisurely, with one’s sleeves down. We must work as economically, i.e., as cheap as possible.

History had fated China—a comparatively backward country—to be the second to raise the banner of social revolution and to hold it aloft for 40 years now; she must fortify her material foundation if she is to continue the stronghold of the world revolution. To do that she must work feverishly, without letup, with the maximum economy of time and energy.

(Excerpt from a talk with leading members of the State Planning Commission, the State Economic Commission and departments in charge of agriculture.)

April 20th 1983
36 posts and 11 image replies omitted.

>>19788
Dengists are the protestants of the left. They don't care about establishing socialism via any mean, they just like cheery-picking quotes and arguing about the meaning of them, as if they were

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>>19788
you miss the point. If I took the usual "communist-sounding" marx and lenin quotes and put them in the mouths of deng, and then never admitted that I was doing this, that would be trying to make deng seem cooler than he is.

but the point of this is that I am actually taking quotes from marx/lenin that ultras think "sound capitalist", attributing them to deng, and then, after they have spent a while coping and seething about how these quotes prove deng wasn't a communist, only then do I reveal that these quotes were actually marx lenin, etc.

So the "deception" is temporary, and is meant to be an exercise in critical thinking. The usual course of these threads is that the anti-deng posters don't look up the source of the quote, fall for the ruse, and after the ruse is revealed, they miss the point, and think I'm trying to do the former, and not the latter.

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>>19788
>And Marx investing in the stock market, for example, doesn't demonstrate anything at all about how he thought socialism should be brought about

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>>19791
> When objectified labour is, in this process, at the same time posited as the worker’s non-objectivity, as the objectivity of a subjectivity antithetical to the worker, as property of a will alien to him, then capital is necessarily at the same time the capitalist, and the idea held by some socialists that we need capital but not the capitalists is altogether wrong.
<Marx, Grundrisse

> Indeed, even the equality of wages, as demanded by Proudhon, only transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labor into the relationship of all men to labor. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist.

<Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

> But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians.

<Engels, Anti-Duhring

>It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against state capitalism and socialism. […] State capitalism would be a gigantic step forward… because the continuation of the anarchy of small ownership is the greatest, the most serious danger, and it will certainly be our ruin (unless we overcome it), whereas not only will the payment of a heavier tribute to state capitalism not ruin us, it will lead us to socialism by the surest road. When the working clas
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>19790
>but the point of this is that I am actually taking quotes from marx/lenin that ultras think "sound capitalist", attributing them to deng, and then, after they have spent a while coping and seething about how these quotes prove deng wasn't a communist, only then do I reveal that these quotes were actually marx lenin, etc.
Because, for Deng, the quotation could demonstrate that, in relation to other evidence. When you attribute the quotation to "Deng," you're attaching it also to what is known otherwise about his positions and what he did in life, and this holds similarly for whoever else you might quote (truly or falsely). A quotation can be evaluated as additional evidence regarding Deng's positions, but it's never evaluated in a vacuum. I'd be surprised if a single person changed their mind from a thread like this. I came to this thread after the reveal, and the only thing it reinforced is never to trust anything cited without a source given that can be easily confirmed.
>So the "deception" is temporary, and is meant to be an exercise in critical thinking
Identifying (mis)quotations requires knowledge of the sources more than critical thinking. Even knowledge doesn't guarantee you'll be right if the quotation "sounds like" something the person it's attributed to might say. I've been able to identify false quotations before, but this is only when I'm very familiar with the person it's attributed to, and the quotation sounds wrong stylistically or positionally. The difficulties here are compounded by problems of translation. In cases where a passage sounds like it might be from an author, it's going to be too difficult to tell whether it's just something unfamiliar or a translation issue unless there's familiarity with the actual source of the fake quote (including the exact wording of the translation). Critical thinking won't reveal it.



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