/edu/ - Education

>Are workers unions easily incorporated by capitalism and reduced to mild reformism which just keeps capitalism alive?
Only up to a point. There are limits to this, which are becoming apparent in the more developed capitalist countries.
Once you are unable to meet labor's demands or to pervert unions for capital's interests, things start to get spicy.
>Why then is there such a large support from radlibs here for unions when they do not have any real revolutionary potential by themselves?
Why is there such support for reading books or arming the workers when neither of those have reveolutionary potential by themselves?
Because revolutionary potential is a confluence of multiple factors, among them being the level of organization of the working class(es) to which unions are a major contributor.
>What's a better alternative, or actual revolutionary unions?
Don't think in terms of "alternatives" here. Life is not a video game where you pick the based option and things work out.
What should happen is that the tools that currently exist are put to their best use (and building up unions is an important step in most of the world at this time), and reconfiguring existing tools into more suitable ones (radicalizing and militarizing unions) and/or building necessary tools that don't yet exist (various types of communist and workers' organizations that are nonexistent, gutted, meaningless, or phony diversions).

>>18032
>Because revolutionary potential is a confluence of multiple factors, among them being the level of organization of the working class(es) to which unions are a major contributor

Well Camatte was covering how the proletarian identity is reflexively given a privileged position by communists automatically. The problem with workers unions under capitalism they are very easy to subvert the real negating power they have. You toss a few disgruntled workers a few extra dollars per hour and they are satisfied with the current state of society as is. They are in a domesticated to accept scraps rather than continuing to use the discontent to undermine capitalism. Namely that their end goals are to just earn more and better working conditions under capitalism and not really to overthrow it in any way

>>18032
>reconfiguring existing tools into more suitable ones (radicalizing and militarizing unions)
How would this happen? And how would you get to a point where normie unions are accepting of this shift?

>>18033
This kind of thing only works if the proles lack the class consciousness to understand that they can get a lot more for themselves and others if they don't just accept those small bribes. That's why it's a confluence of multiple factors. In this case the combination of organized workers and theoretical understanding acts as a defense against this kind of subversion. Which is why part of the task is to make the unions more radical and more literate. It's not enough to have greater organization (which means greater command of workers' already-existing power) – you also need sufficient understanding to wield that power effectively.
>They are in a domesticated to accept scraps rather than continuing to use the discontent to undermine capitalism.
Only so long as the scraps are sufficient to sustain a reasonable quality of life, which is quickly no longer the case in the imperial core thanks to neoliberalism, which is a consequence of both a progressing "corruption" of the bourgeois state away from more rational economics toward narrow, short term profitability and a natural tendency of the system as the rate of profit falls.

>>18034
Depends on the scenario. Ideally you'd have union leadership pushing for that since that would be most efficient and effective. Alternatively you could form a revolutionary faction within a union that starts with something as simple as hosting reading groups focused on labor organizing history and tactics, because that's of very direct interest to the union as a whole and would be a lot more likely to spread within it. The more the union membership understands of theory the more effective it will be, and the greater the incentive to read more. If a union is operating in that mode it is already "doing Marxism" in the philosophical sense of applying materialist theory and praxis. From there it's not as hard as you might think to introduce communism.

>>18644
>What he's saying is that people misunderstand class and think it's like an in-born quality instead of your economic situation that can change

Nobody is saying that or said that in Soviet Russia.

That being said, the bourgeoisie will not just give up their position. You have to beat them without mercy.

>>18649
The bourgeoisie weren't disenfranchised
Maybe some individuals were, but not the whole class

>>18651
And even this meager policy was repealed in the 30s anyways

>>18651
Yes they were lol, anyone using hired labour was banned from voting and other privileges.

>>18653
Nope, also they were still able to press for concessions like the NEP, and they were still able to manage their capital with a few stipulations, something that gave them realer power than the state
The Bolsheviks' criteria for disenfranchisement was stupid. It mainly targeted "idlers", so if a bourgeois worked directly for their company, or better yet became an administrator in the Soviet state, they were exempt
Only some financial and rentier bourgeois were affected because they were "idle parasites", not because they were bourgeois

>>18636
The role of Indian communists in both analysis and struggle against caste-ism is not studied enough in the west IMO. It's different but there is something to learn from it. Race in the U.S. is like a caste system.

>Caste really became rigid and fossilised in the medieval era. The colonial system under the British rule both further rigidised the caste-system as well as opened up ways for its weakening. The contradictory processes of limited and colonial industrialisation and semi-capitalist development loosened the caste-bonds, and at the same time created new castes, bondings and rigidities. Factories and mills objectively weakened caste as a structure. The growth of the market including the labour-market, money-commodity exchange and the far greater movement of men and material (roads, railways, etc.) violated caste-barriers. As S.A. Dange was fond of saying, one never knew in whose plate one was eating in an eating-place or which castes and hands in a factory handled the threads in a factory.

>The British colonial system needed the caste-system, at the same time, as a source of cheap, even bonded labour. The disintegrating caste hierarchy was sought to be kept alive as forms of movement of labour. New caste practices came up eulogising the ideology of casteism and ‘glorious’ histories of each one of the castes were written. It has to be realised that casteism is basically a product of colonialism.

>The recruitment of urban labourers, factory hands and even educated personnel took the form of the transfer and migration of people of the same caste, village, district, and language groups to towns, mills and businesses. These castes were basically the most depressed ones. In the rural areas the oppression of the lowermost ‘castes’ (by birth) was most virulent; their members were thus ‘liberated’ by industrialisation and urbanisation, often resulting in the preservation even increase in caste-consciousness.

>Caste began to break up but casteism gained strength.
https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv12n1/caste.htm

>>18637
I'm not sure that i agree that caste systems are exclusive to the indian subcontinent. I cant think of anything that describes, for example, the american jim crow era policies of segregation and banned miscegenation, as anything but a caste system. I think caste is more pervasive than just india, which actually might be why socialism has so much difficulty describing social issues outside of class analysis.

For if existent things, as objects of vision and of hearing and of the senses in general, are by definition externally existent, and if these visible things are apprehensible by sight and audible by hearing, and not vice versa, how, in this case, can these things be indicated to another person? For the means by which we indicate is speech, and speech is not identical with the really subsistent things; therefore we do not indicate to our neighbor the existent things but speech, which is other than what subsists. Thus, just as the visible things will not become audible, and vice versa, so too, since the existent subsists externally, it will not become identical with our speech; and not being speech, it cannot be revealed to another person.
Speech, moreover, is formed from the impressions caused by external objects, that is to say, objects of sense; for from the occurrence of flavor there is produced in us the speech uttered concerning this quality, and by the incidence of color speech respecting color. And if this be so, it is not speech that serves to reveal the external object, but the external object that proves to be explanatory of speech. Moreover, it is not possible to assert that speech subsists in the same fashion as things visible and audible, so that the subsisting and existent things can be indicated by it as by a thing subsisting and existent. For, he says, even if speech subsists, yet it differs from the rest of subsisting things, and visible bodies differ very greatly from spoken words; for the visible object is perceptible by one sense-organ and speech by another. Therefore speech does not serve to indicate the great majority of subsisting things, even as they themselves do not reveal each other’s nature.
But even if they are known, how could anyone reveal them to someone else? For how could anyone express what they have seen in speech or, how could it become clear to the hearer, if he has not seen it? For just as sight does not recognize sounds, so, likewise, hearing does not recognize colors, but only sounds; moreover, the speaker speaks, but he does not speak a color or a thing. So, when someone has no conception, how could he conceive it through someone else’s words, or through some sign which is other than that thing, unless he sees it, if it is a color, or he hears it, if it is a sound? For, firstly, nobody speaks a sound or a color, but only a word; so that it is not possible to think a color but only to see it; nor to think a sPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>17860
Because its a science, physics has much more complicated definitions for things like charge, gravity and acceleration than commonly used.

>>17891
tank you anon

>>17893
Theres also this one by the same author about Historical Materialism, they are both great reads.

>>17871
>It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno. They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno’s works in their notes.
bruno was based

>>17871
the source of this text btw seems to be Antonio Gramsci - The Modern Prince and Other Writings

>>13064
>y in 1941 they are not only supporting confescation of upper, middle and lower peasantry's land and grain, but are actively burning down whole villages, turning them from neutrality to anti-communism.
i mean isn't the peasantry usually anti-communist because
1) they're not proles
2) they have different class interests
3) they are often beholden to traditionalist ideas like monarchy and loyalty to one's betters?

The question of the peasantry versus the proletariat goes back to the first international .

>>15427
there's no peasantry left in Europe so this question has resolved itself there

>>10699
its actually kind of a psyop that promotes individualist main character syndrome

>thousand faces
>wow hes just like me!

>>12915
>wow they just like me
But isn't that the opposite of individualist delusion or syndrome?

I've heard that his series, "the Masks of God" was pretty good. I think socialists forget how important self-actualization is.
>How will communism create a society in which my life has meaning?
It's a fair question and one that should be asked of each society.

>How will capitalism create a society where my life has meaning?
In capitalist society, the meaning of life is making money to stay ahead and not lose your social status, access to basic necessities, etc. (Not very compelling.)

Can communism be your bliss? Is it easier to find self-actualization in a society where workers have rights? Where people have healthcare and are better able to achieve their basic needs?

>>

There's a good video essay about how monomyth is just an ignorance tool and has links with white-supremacy rhetorics.
https://youtu.be/Q9zR4lWyVN8

>>10703
Lucas was inspired by the kurosawa film "hidden fortress," hero with a thousand faces, buddhism, christianity, and Dune.

>>13662
But it seems non-genuine. He's already amusing himself with the strawman attack from Lenin.
But yes, I will answer anyway.

The first man to make a real rebuttal was Herman Gorter, a party-oriented council communist from the Netherlands. Within the councilcom tendency more rebuttals appeared afterwards, but I think they were of lesser quality, as with time their positions degenerated and came closer to anarchism. Gorter was a party-oriented Marxist communist, whose only "mistake" was to doubt Lenin's claim that the bolshevik model was copy-paste:able from the successful semi-feudal peripheral conditions where it succeeded, directly to the urbanized, advanced capitalist conditions in western Europe at the time.
>Open Letter to Comrade Lenin
https://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter.htm

When I get the time I will highlight important passages in this letter, because I think the arguments, til this day, are solid and has held up the past century of historical scrutiny.

>>13664
That was the one. Thanks.

>>13664
LWC is a book more often brought up than read, but it's even more of a shame that the people who do read it rarely check out the full conversation by reading the responses to it. Gorter's response is really completely reasonable, I was really taken aback reading it after being accustomed to the strawman in Lenin's book.
Bordiga also wrote a giant response to the book later on, and it's like 90 pages of him saying how much he is in favor of it, which makes it all the more hilarious that LWC is typically brought up as a gotcha against the "leftcoms" in the Italian tradition.

>>13663
>owning tankies
lol fuck off

>>15424
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