/edu/ - Education

look, i know it's trendy for some to be all about that dialectical life, but let's be real for a sec. the way that social-fascist pseudo-Marxists and pro-China neo-revisionists try to wield dialectics is not only tired but downright oppressive. they act like their version of Leftism is the only way to resist capitalism and imperialism, but they forget that even Marx himself recognized the limitations of dialectics in his later years.

i'm not saying we should all become anti-Leninist Maoists or anything, but we need to recognize that dialectics doesn't account for the fluctuations of reality. it's too rigid and dogmatic for our ever-changing world. instead, we should embrace eclectics, which allows for a more fluid and adaptable approach to revolutionary praxis. we can take inspiration from various theories and practices without getting bogged down in sectarianism.

now, i know some of y'all might be thinking "but what about post-structuralists?? they're all about that anti-dialectical life!" and while i agree that their critiques are important, we also need to be cautious about how we approach their theories. we don't want to fall into the trap of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, who use postmodernism as an excuse to avoid taking any real action.

what we need is a safe space, a place where we can embrace the complexity and messiness of reality without getting trapped in dialectical thinking. this means recognizing that our ideas and strategies will always be provisional and subject to change, and that's okay. as long as we keep moving forward and adapting to new circumstances, we can create a truly revolutionary praxis that is inclusive, adaptable, and effective.

peace and love

hot take: Kautsky's theory of "ultra imperialism" was ultimately correct, but 100 years ahead of its time. Lenin was correct in the contemporary debate, but Kautsky is correct today. Today we have an ultra-imperialist coalition called NATO that will coup, sanction, embargo, invade, wage proxy wars, and otherwise destabilize any government, even bourgeois governments, that do not align with its economic hegemonic interests. This ultra-imperialism, rather than exporting capital and creating its own future competitors in a developmentalist fashion, has learned from the mistakes of past empires, and now limits the amount of capital it exports. It no longer develops the periphery like the traditional bourgeoisie of the 18th and 19th century did. It instead arrests the development of peripheral countries, so that they can remain neo-colonies for as long as possible. This is done through relatively innocuous methods like coup regimes taking out high interest IMF loans with structural adjustment programs rather than obvious methods like invasion and enslavement. Because of the innocuousness and efficiency of the methods of neocolonialism, the neocolonial relationship is obfuscated and made confusing to the general public, who do not see it operating. It also make geopolitical conflicts more confusing, and can make a power defending against a proxy war look like an aggressor. Furthermore, China is bourgeois, but they are bourgeois in the traditional sense that they actually export capital and help develop the global south, which is why global south nations are choosing to ally with them over the imperial core. Having a traditional imperialist relationship turns out to be less parasitic than having an ultra-imperialist relationship in the same way that being an indentured servant is better than being a slave. Traditional imperialism makes the nations of the periphery indentured servants to the imperial core. Ultra-imperialism constantly resets the clock and arrests development, effectively making them slaves to the imperial core, because their level of development can't catch up enough to throw off the shackles of the imperial relationship and its fundamental wage disparity, even though their development nominally continues. this is the source of all the confused argument over multipolarity/unipolarity, whether such and such nation is bourgeois or not. The difference between comprador and national bourgeoisie now matters more than ever. Also, the climate iPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

This utopian garbage by P.F Skinner (Yes, THAT Skinner, for whom the Skinner Box is named after) has no right to be called a socialist novel and anyone who says it is is delusional.

For starters, the book is objectively terrible from a literary standpoint (like most Utopian novels honestly, it's a shit genre). Every chapter is dedicated to some aspect of the Walden Two "Utopia" and consists of Frazier, P.F Skinner's self insert character in the novel, explaining why Walden Two is so epic and based and wonderful in X aspect to bland and unoriginal to a small cast of forgettable characters visiting Walden Two for no reason other than to be ranted at by Frazier apparently.

Walden Two's "Utopia" is ran by a professional caste of Planners (unelected, naturally, not even held in check by a Party of any kind) set apart from the usual workers who run and plan everything and use Radical Behaviorism (essentially mind control through selected use of pleasure and pain) to alter the needs, wants, and desires of its citizens to conform better to society's needs. It's funny how the book is structured to make this seem like a good thing. Many chapters go to great lengths to explain why Walden Two is a haven for art, culture, shorter working hours, better working conditions, etc, in order to justify this behavioral altering. The chapter on education shows hungry children made to sit in front of food for hours at a time without eating it in order to build "patience". One can only imagine the child abuse going on behind the scenes to make this sort of lunacy possible. Walden Two is the sort of book that is in favor of beating your children.

Towards the end of the book it's revealed that Frazier is a complete egomaniac who personally runs and plans much of Walden Two (But um, actualleh that's totally OK b/c Walden Two has a 4 hour work week!!!!). He compares himself to Jesus Christ and his fellow Planners as his disciples.

Walden Two takes the liberal argument "hurr durr, muh human nature means ppl too greedy for socialist utopia" and responds with "You're correct, people are greedy and evil! Let's MIND CONTROL people into being selfless!" instead of refuting the initial argument as liberal bullshit.

All attempts at implementing Walden Two IRL are either hippie communes that have long since abandoned Skinner's philosophy (as they should) or dystopian torture nightmares that take Frazier's egomania in the original novel to the extrPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Why do people continue believing in ghosts or souls after Phineas Gage?

I see a handful of religious leftists on here who believe in souls, ghosts, and even silly things like an immutable "National Character" inherent to geographic regions. They usually use these things as an excuse for reactionary idealism or outright sadism.

The "self" is a function of biology, rather than an eternal and immutable immaterial thing.

>Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable  survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life‍—‌effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him (for a time at least) as "no longer Gage". 

>Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion,​​ and was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

Absolutely spooked reactionaries to this day continue to believe we have little ghosty ghosts created by God that determine our personality, our disposition, the kinds of choices we make in our life, and that in turn determines which fictional realm our ghosty ghosts get sent to after we die. When, in reality, something out of your control like an illness or traumatic brain injury can fundamentally change who you are and how you act and the kinds of decisions you make.

Spooked reactionaries are sadists who want to continue to punish people for how the machinery of their brains work, rather than closely study people to determine a path to changing behavior without torture, imprisonment, capital punishment and other reactionary spookery. They say "actions have consequences" not realizing that the "consequences" of actions are socially constructed or that crime and other taboo behaviors are rarely deterred by the severity of punishments.

Nearly every successful socialist revolution has happened in an underdeveloped nation in the global periphery, usually very early in that place's capitalist development. While these revolutionary projects have proved incredibly successful at raising living standards and quality of life and modernizing their nations, most successful socialist projects have a habit of reverting through revisionism into some level of capitalist development. Those who remain committed to more Marxist-Leninist economic practices often become incredibly isolationist due to imperialist pressure.

Similarly, working class movements, things like trade unions and communist parties, were vastly more successful in the imperial core in the early stage of capitalist development. Stuff like the Paris Commune or the 1877 St. Louis General Strike would be nearly impossible today with the state of working class organization. Post-war modernization became incredibly efficient at decimating union membership and demonizing and coopting social movements. Besides, if you get a guy organizing like Lenin in a modern state they'll just kill you or imprison you for 30 years instead of sending you to a comfy cabin in Siberia for a couple summers and hoping you learn your lesson.

Essentially every highly developed capitalist nation has become incredibly efficient at atomizing workers, manufacturing alienation, and crushing the capacity of its people to organize any resistance. Look at miserable places like America, or South Korea. If the social technology available to the ruling class to manufacture consent and divide & conquer their working class only gets more sophisticated over time, why should we assume that socialism is necessarily bound to emerge from developmental progress, even if it's obviously better and technological advances might even make stuff like cybernetic central planning feasible? What's stopping them from simply making human beings so alienated from each other that fighting back is impossible? Stuff promising "socialism by 2050" because development will necessarily lead to communism seems about as likely as liberal states promising net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or whatever. Is there anything to meaningfully contradict this? The resurgence of nationalist social democracy in LatAm and stuff is encouraging but it feels like a step back in ambition.

Oliver Cromwell was the greatest British Revolutionary.
Oliver Cromwell is akin to Robspierre, a revolutionary far ahead of his time, which helped develope a revolutionary tradition within britain and inspire europe itself to light itself aflame in the fires of revolt. His reforms introduced democracy not only to the state but to all of society itself. His New Model army was itself based of a democratic foundation which pushed for discussion and debate within its ranks in order to make the army iteslf a ideological extension of Parlimentary Political thought, something which was also seen within the Red Army.
Since then, a pile of dirt was thrown across Cromwells grave and he was deemed a imperialist, a genocider, and other such statements which were fabricated by the Royalist restorationists with no basis for such claims other than trying to de-legitimize a authentic Revolutionary which was Cromwell. While not as radical as the Levellers or Diggers, Cromwell still stands as a progressive and revolutionary hero in British history, and rehabilitating his image amongst Marxists and Britons as a whole would lay the foundations for a revolutionary revival in Britain.



In short' I'd like to end with a quote from Trotsky: "British workers can learn incomparably more from Cromwell than from MacDonald, Snowden, Webb and other such compromising brethren. Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century"

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/

With all the corporate consolidations and acquisitions and mergers at an all time high and with banks collapsing left and right. Is the ROP just tanking? And I mean so low that there's no way to draw any more profit except through more and more consolidation. To me it seems that the ROP has gone into the negatives and shareholders primacy is the only policy, abandoning long term plans for short term quarterly results.

Preface: This handy set of rules covers most of the games which disinformation artists play on the Internet (and offline). When you know the tricks, you’ll be able to spot the games. Even if you’ve read this list before, you might be surprised at how useful it is to brush up on these tricks.

Update: This was originally apparently written by H. Michael Sweeney.

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don’t discuss it — especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it’s not reported, it didn’t happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.

2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit.

3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such “arguable rumors”. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a “wild rumor” which can have no basis in fact.

4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponenPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

A lot of you seem to be under the belief that you can have marxist theory without ontological grounding. But to me it seems the positive sciences that say things about the 'world' rely on a totally certain idea of what 'world' means. So why don't we all have a calm discussion about ontology and attempt to come to an understanding of why there are so many of you (usually tankies) for whomst philosophy and ontology appears 'meaningless'? For me it seems to be the most important thing that we properly understand the dependency and aims of sciences (which simply explicate categories about our "external" reality) on a proper approach towards the world. In a sense, I think Marxists also unconsciously on some level agree with this, because you recognise that the bourgeois sciences mainly operate in service of capital, and this is unwanted. But on the other hand you seem to shoot yourselves on the foot by explicitly denying the validity of ontology in favour of vapid essentialism. From where does this 'materialism' come? Even in naive realist ontologies we see that the brain mediates reality, but there is no account for this in the materialist ontology.

I don't see much substance from Marx by way of arguing for materialism either. Deleuze follows kind of a more enlightened transcendental empiricism which I find far more respectable but that required torturous meditation beginning from a throwing away of beings in favour of the search for a proper ontology. But *you* personally, the person who is reading this, how do you understand ontology, if all you've spent all your life on is the pursuit of small-B beings, never evaluating the existential nature of 'world', which rather than being something we are merely placed in, is constitutive of our being?

What was this book about again? It was my least favorite Lenin book. I know it's like the Organon to Engels' Dialectics of Nature, but every single one of Lenin's arguments was so unremarkable that they're forgettable. He's very terse and verbose. Does Lenin argue badly or is materialism a very dull philosophy and we like making shit up (see the post-1968. French Left).

Like, help a comrade out here. I fell in a post-Marxist reading hellscape due to bourgeois propaganda and need a hefty dose of sanity to get back on track.