/edu/ - Education

We've finished Luxemburg's The National Question.
This weekend we will take off (Easter weekend and people may be busy.)
For the next weekend, we're reading Lenin's The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm

>>10357
why dont you finish this dick

also what are you guys gonna read next?

Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.

And I was instead suggested this reading list to better study the question of race and class in the American settler social formation and how racial chauvanism presented itself and sabotage the proletarian struggle for power, something that we can't understand from reading any one book.

Here's the reading lists of books we should read before Settlers:
>A Nation Beneath Our Feet by Steven Hahn
<Workers of the World Undermined by Beth Sims
>Roots of Oppression by Talbot
<The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights by Robin Blackburn
>Whiteness of a different color by Matthew Frye Jacobson
<Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert L. Allen

W. E. B. Du Bois is an author that would also be integral to study the question as well

I think reading all these books and authors would give us a good comprehensive understanding, but we should also eventually read Settlers for its impact on the left as well to give us the tools to expose arguements and criticisms of the book by those who haven't actually read it

>>10454
>Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.
Black Reconstruction -> Settlers -> False Nationalism, False Internationalism are pretty much the go-to combination for those interested in understanding the thread topic from the context of the New Communist Movement.

This Saturday
Time: 6pm UTC (subject to change if it's inconvenient)
We'll be covering Lenin's The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up. (again)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm
We want to give everyone the opportunity to read and join the discussion, since this text is closing out our introduction to the topic before we move into the modern context in the following weeks. We'll be doing an overview of the Self-Determination question as well, including the question of how the question manifests in the present.

The plan for the readings in the following weeks are:
<1> Decolonization is not a metaphor by Tuck & Yang (2012) (40 pages) https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf
<2> Democratic Confederalism by Abdulla Ocalan (2011) (48 pages) http://www.freeocalan.org/books/#/book/democratic-confederalism
<3> Dawn: Marxism and National Liberation from Tricontinental (2021) (30ish pages) https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-37-marxism-and-national-liberation/

After that, we are planning to look at more specific contexts drawing form this list >>9295 and other places.
Here is the list of suggestions we have been discussing so far.
<Stalin – National Question
<Aimée Césaire
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10331
>The bends
As a Diver I'll tell you that the Bends form from rapid decompression and are the result of nitrogen/gas bubbles forming in the tissues and blood vessels, primarily of the limbs. It's not guaranteed lethal unless it hits your heart, and even that isn't for sure.
Also the reason the camps got made originally had been to hold the undesirables, and the original method of killing and cleansing had been firing squads (that still did operate on the frontlines like at Baby Yar) but the bullets became more needed to fight, and other methods (such as the gassing vans using vehicle exhaust had been too inefficient. It's far easier to fill a chamber of 100 or more people and gas them en masse in a trapped space before burning or burying the bodies.
>Poorfags wont move even if you point a gun to them
<Muh romans
Besides the fact that the Judaic population of Europe had been less at home there than most other Europeans due to centuries of persecution (such as land-possession laws). Moreover The infrastructure and social structure of Europe in the 20th century are markedly different to Ancient Rome.
>deurbanization
Except it didn't, the Judaic diaspora resulting from the policies and activities of the 1930s and 40s was massive, even before the Holocaust began.
>Stupid people invest more time in physical activities
A single article is not proof that "low-IQ = stronger"
>that's anectodal evidence
No, that's called an example, stop using terms you don't undertand
>he is successful, because he has a high IQ
That's nonsense, IQ is meaningless and had little to do with Arnie, given that his fame and success had been made on dedicated Body-building and not intelligence.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

I often see mention of how it's not possible to cremate all the Jews which is a strange argument since no one claimed such a thing. They mainly were shot and buried in mass graves.

>>10434
True, there's even a famous film depicting the uncovering of immense mass graves

>>10434
>it's not possible to cremate all the Jews
It's not even true

Any good debunking of Paul Rassinier?

The Indian Bill by Karl Marx: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/07/24.htm

This is a good work by Karl Marx that talks about Imperialism and how it functions in relation to India. Imperialism, capitalism based on finance-capital. Capitalism itself seeks to dominate over other nations, and grow the proletariat as large as it can. Thus when they invade and dominate over other nations, they integrate national people, to be apart of the proletariat, apart of the same bourgeois class, that buys the labor power of workers in other nations as well. Thus with the rise of imperialism, gives rise to the resentment of imperialism and the interests of the bourgeoisie using imperialism being made for more commodities to be made, and have a higher expression of value. Which entails more workers that are in these nations they take over. Imperialism is the epoch of the constantly increasing oppression of the nations of the world by a handful of “great” powers and, therefore, it is impossible to fight for the socialist international revolution against imperialism unless the right of nations to self-determination is recognized.

Taxation in India by Karl Marx: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/07/23.htm

This is a good work from Karl Marx that talks about taxation and how it functions in capitalism. Taxation is a way to have commodities provided by the state be paid through a market exchange between it's citizens and to the state. The competition among the market then is able to act into specific motions and actions that is allowing for the bourgeois state to act as an abstract bourgeois, for them to allow the physical bourgeoise to then buy the private property for themselves, to increase the production of commodities. During the decades preceding the war, free competition, as the regulator of production and distribution, had already been thrust aside in the main fields of economic life by the system of trusts and monopolies; during the course of the war the regulating-directing role was torn from the hands of these economic groups and transferred directly into the hands of military state power.

The Revolt in India by Frederick Engels: Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10122
Thanks anon.

>>10122
Why did Marx say this:
>England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.
?
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm

>>10133
Engels is talking about Britain essentially uprooting India's culture and unlike prior conquerors (all of whom are Asian) The British had a completely foreign culture and developmentally surpassed India in all regards, permitting them to utterly dominate Indian culture. This and their selfish industrial development provided India the push to break off from its under-developed feudalism. Essentially Britain's power acts as a force to push the historical dialectics of India to the next level.

New additions:

>Mao's "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society"
>The Programme of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, as adopted in its Second Congress, in 1903, which saw the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
>A document from the Third Congress of the Communist International detailing the structure and organization of communist parties

https://archive.marxists.xyz/library/mao-zedong-analysis-of-the-classes-in-chinese-society-en
https://archive.marxists.xyz/library/russian-social-democratic-labour-party-programme-of-the-social-democratic-workers-party-en
https://archive.marxists.xyz/library/communist-international-guidelines-on-the-organizational-structure-of-communist-parties-en

Hello, first of all, just wanted to express my gratitude for this project, as it has been of great use to me, and seems to be a rather thankless task.
I also wanted to report a typo i found in the manifesto, just above the "Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties" section:
>and bv their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
I actually had seen and compiled more of these on my e-reader, but when looking at the site text, they were no other typos. Must have been something that went wrong when converting the file type.

>>10438
This makes me wonder if there's any kind of proofreading situation for the site.

>>10439
Probably, as eveything else was seemingly fine.

>>10438
Typo fixed, thanks for pointing it out. That said, if you ever find a mistake in a text like this, you can edit it yourself. There's a button for that on the top header where the different file downloads are, simply click it, edit the text and submit it for moderation.

>>10439
Nothing very formal, just a quick look through texts as they get edited. We should probably get a proper spellchecking set up.

Glad you're making good use of the site anon.

>>10414
You seem to be conflating two distinct things. There is a difference between pandering to the masses and having popular support. Marx and Engels definitely thought there was a need for popularity and used rhetoric to appeal to the masses in their pamphlets, but they just didn't compromise their message to make that appeal. There is a difference between Bonaparte using reactionary populism to appeal to the peasants or Lassalle oversimplifying/changing Marxist concepts to popularize the idea of social democracy and a large segment of workers lead by a party starting a revolution which is joined by the rest of the masses. Otherwise it would just be Blanquism.

>>10422
/thread basically

>>10429
everything he mentions in that laundry list is obscurantist bs, not "existing practice"

>>10413
>What are some examples of unpopular revolutions?
Examples of "revolutions" without majority politcal support would be the Saur Revolution which was a minoritarian palace coup, the PDPA did not build in-roads with the majority peasant population which lead to their ultimate demise. Their ultraleft and shortsighted policies lead to them alienating the population who eventually turned on them. That's what happens when you have a revolution with no popular support.

Contrast this to Lenin and Bolsheviks who prioritised majority support before starting their revolution.
From "The Dual Power" by Lenin (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm )
>"To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side.As long as no violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority. We are Marxists, we stand for proletarian class struggle against petty-bourgeois intoxication, against chauvinism-defencism, phrase-mongering and dependence on the bourgeoisie."
Lenin is saying if you don't want to use violance and coercion against the proletariat (and as demonstrated by Afghanistan will eventually collapse your position of power), you need majority support amongst the proletariat when seizing power.

And from "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" by Lenin (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm )
>"If the revolutionary party has no majority in the advanced contingents of the revolutionary classes and in the country, insurrection is out of the question."
It's the reason why the Bolsheviks launched the revolution in October of 1917, and not April of that year. Had the Bolsheviks attempted to launch the revolution in April when they did not have majority support then it was nearly all but certain the revolution would have been put down.

And maintaing popular support is why the USSR implemented the NEP after the failure of the european revolutions which lead to an isolation of thePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Texts about Songun

>>5697
lol

>>10113
>https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%7C%7B%7D%7C%3D
Wolfram is interpreting it as the absolute value and not cardinality of sets. (See pic 1)
>you can't have a set without an empty set, no?
Can you clarify this question? Are you referring to the construction of natural numbers starting with the empty set?

>>10113
NTA but reposting a link (archived version is available).
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/283/is-0-a-natural-number

Another day I didn't study. Why do I do this, the exam session is about to start aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

>search page 0 results for optimization or operations research.
You're not being good central planners with this attitude.

>>338
Math seems like such a massive field that It would be impossible to master in a lifetime unless you have a specific interest or use it for practical purposes.

>>3273
I think you have it right that there are two aspects in fascism, but you get some things wrong about historical fascism

I 100% agree with the idea that the material reality of fascism is essentially a completion of liberalism, as carried out by the bourgeoisie. It is the annihilation of the individual in the name of the social body (as represented by the nation, which is represented by the state or singular leader himself). It is also in some ways anti-capitalist in that it formally subjects the economy to political control, but the nature of that control will always tend to be in favor of whatever bourgeois interests are ruling the system. This is not paradoxical, since companies have to exist in the context of a whole economy, and so in order to shape themselves as they see fit, they need the freedom to impose on all others. This is achieved through political control of the economy. In this way it's even materially progressive. The US deepstate is currently upholding these ideas in a socially progressive veneer. Hillary Clinton, by this definition, is a fascist.

But the other side which is equally necessary to fully understand fascism is it's irrationalism. It is an answer to the problem of modernity. It's a failed answer, but tbh as far as things go it's pretty advanced I think. Fascism is for the rejection of this modern period of generalized nihilism and overturning by the installation of an "eternal" state which is to faithfully represent the true national Spirit. It's at it's core Idealist. It's similar to anarchism maybe? In that they can both be idealist and copes with the problem of modernity. But other than that they're pretty unrelated. Though between these ideas there is a sort of voluntarism or libertinism for the leadership, who are to have full artistic freedom over society. This makes sense, since the state needs it's solidity recognized in order to "represent" (or more accurately, displace) the reality of the individual citizen.

And it's not so much necessarily racist, as trying to worship an aesthetic rendering of their understanding of their particular national being. This is why I say it's more advanced. They fail because of their worship of an aesthetic representation and the negation of the individual (imagining an antagonism between real concrete individual, and the society they make), but they are correct to hoPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>3364
i'll take back a total criticism of your idea of them being reactionary anarchists, but I think that there's a lot more nuance there to be had. But then it becomes a job of charting out the different tendencies around there….

The common factor of consistency though is their position as a cope for liberalism, they rest on nihilism, which is dysfunctional, and so they cover that up with idealism. The nihilism is at it's core always an active nihilism, so there's a current of overturning and savagery under their "beautiful idea" which they want to implement against reality.

>>3365
this book is pretty neat. but it sadly goes on a literally dictionary definition of fascism, instead of investigating how fascism was for people living in it, and what they thought and did and said, etc. I wish we could have seen a parallel of how fascist subjects viewed their society to compare to our view of our society…

>>10367
This is one of the few posts on here (or anywhere really) that actually understands fascism and isn't just the usual liberal claptrap/reflexive definition-mongering. You actually know its philosophical basis beyond some vague notion of 'racism'. One thing I would add is that, because of the idealism and its relation to the spirit, as well as the totalism of the state, fascism is also something which keenly regards the 'potential' within each member of its national identity. Fascism is a strange ideology in this respect, because on the one hand, it is intensely hierarchical, but on the other, the hierarchy is a sort of 'fluid' one, rather than a fixed or essentialized one (insofar as we are exempt nazism as being apart from the other strains of 'proper' fascism); the 'hero in every man' ambition is an extension of its concept of spirit, and its national totalism, a collective totality of assimilated particulars, wrought with its tendency towards the equalizing potentiation of each person: the power they have in themselves to become something more. But in doing so, they assert their own hierarchical sovereignty under the same state which subsumes and potentiates them all with an equal sense of identity. The economically related stance of corporatism is precisely the attempt to reconcile the seeming contradiction already enmeshed within liberalism, that problem of 'equality yet competition', and it (fascism's evolved 'solution' to the problem) does so through the leveraging force of a national belonging which promises all members of society to be contributive members, contributive in the sense of having some functional purpose regardless of standing, whilst simultaneously encouraging upwards mobility nonetheless. Corporatism was the synthesis of maintaining the 'lower' end of the strata without dehumanizing it, via the promise of unlimited internal possibility and the valuing of all members. In this way, the caricature of communism most people mistakenly preconceive 'communism is about some naive sense of equality' is actually much more at home within fascism's philosophical implications and doctrine than it is within real communism, which has little to do with such an assertion necessarily. Gentile even outright states in 'theory of mind as pure act': "Think of what you wish to be, and you can become it". His seminal work 'on education' is similar. This is the Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10381
woah cool post

this really fills in the idea that fascism is a more total reckoning of the liberal idea of a singular individual, the difference being that the fascist state is supposed to represent the particular national interests rather than claim some universality.

Also you touched on a point i havent really reconciled yet (due to lack of knowledge), which is the relation of the two faces of fascism, the material and the ideological. At first i assumed there was no necessary tie, but now I think they probably are very intertwined somehow, but i can't say exactly why… my hangup is just that basically we already are getting a fascism materially, but without the ideology. So will we develop a fascist ideology to go along? Or does neoconservatism among the elites constitute this fascist ideology? IMO neoconservatism is less advanced than fascism (because it still keeps liberalism's ideal of universalism, while in its real material character, promoting the interests of one nation… i'll take a guess and say that you face off neocons against welfare "socialist" democrats and you'll basically develop nazism out of it… all the more easily because no one actually gets acquainted with the real philosophy of nazism and just learns "concentration camps bad, racism bad" instead) but it seems to be bringing about a similar material state of things either way.

anyways, this lays the groundwork for dialectical-materialism and a society which is both oriented inwards and with a knowledge of its particular nature, but also which sees the exactly reciprocal relationship it has with its people, particular individuals, who fully embody society in their being. But alas, no one even cares about this shit it seems like….