/edu/ - Education

>>24512
Michael Rosen was the author who did monologue stories that YouTube Poop artists satirized.

eh schniff
my eh fucking zizek impression is eh getting fucking better you know and so on and eh so on

Following a discussion in >>>/tech/

just finished Materialism and the dialectical method by maurice cornforth, and they recommend i read next:
Socialism, utopian and scientific (engels),
Anarchism or socialism (stalin),
to prepare me for
the communist manifesto,
so i can read Dialectical and Historical Materialism, which is my target.
I've wanted to understand what historical materialism is ever since i stumbled upon what appeared to me to be the insane ramblings of https://www.anti-dialectics.co.uk/ earlier this year

>>24614
What's insane about it? (Length aside.)

>>24615
was really struggling to understand dialectics at the time, so to me nothing made sense at all, it just looked like another time-cube sorta website

Finished The Chapo Guide to Revolution by the podcasters of Chapo Trap House (2018). Humor can only do so much for me when the topic is awful (burger politics). I found it depressing to read. Hasn't aged much, which makes it even more depressing. Among other things, the book got taxonomies of types of libs and cons, with illustrations by Eli Valley.
<LIBERAL HAWK
<The horrors of the world are unavoidable. But while most of us look at those horrors and say “I like that” or “That’s good; keep going,” there are a brave few who boldly declare that things are bad and we must “do something.” And if the evil actor in question happens to oppose America’s imperial goals, there you will find the Liberal Hawk, bravely crying for nonspecific action.

<Don’t confuse the Liberal Hawk with its cousin, the Neocon. Sure, they may advocate the exact same policy goals of vague “American leadership” and push for the same confrontation with Iran and funding for any group from Ukraine’s Hitler Appreciation Club to Syria’s Jabhat al-Cumshit irredentist militias, so long as they “undermine Putin” and “advance democracy,” and yes, their livelihoods are funded by magazines no one reads and think tanks that benefit no one but their murky Gulf sheikh and robber-baron descendants—but they’re completely different. For one, the Liberal Hawk won’t rail against safe spaces and PC culture the way the Neocon will. In one breath, the Liberal Hawk will quote a potential six-figure death toll from a potential intervention as “a price worth paying,” then in the next be moved nearly to tears while describing to you the last book they read, which is invariably called something like The Balls to Be a Woman: Golda Meir’s War against Toxic Masculinity.

<But like all things, this comes down to compensation: while the Neocon is usually a fudge-fingered treat addict who can be bought off by any lobby so long as they bring snacks, the Liberal Hawk requires things like dry Riesling, ski holidays in Gstaad, and tickets for shit like “A Jazz Tribute to NATO.”

<FIGHTING STYLE: LinkedIn posts, cluster bombs
<SEXUAL REPRESSION LEVEL: Offers free foot rubs to IDF soldiers

i js thought of a hypothetical kweer kommunist klub for some reason

You asked me what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking that objectively speaking I am an oppressor and an enemy of humanity and I can’t go on living with this knowledge. White settler Maoists, how do you continue existing with the knowledge that your annihilation would be a good thing and any violence against you is justified? I’m not going to do anything drastic tonight but I desperately need to communicate with someone who understands me on this.

>>24619
I have been avoiding reading because I’m afraid it’s going to send me even further down this spiral. There, hope we’re on topic now. I’ve been avoiding studying Marxism for the same reason for 10+ years. I only know what I’ve gleaned from certain verbal abusers on reddit and other social media

Finished The Lifespan of a Fact a book that shows an essay by John D'Agata, with comments and corrections by editor Jim Fingal, and some back and forth between the two (2012). The essay is about a teen suicide. And I don't want to be disrespectful to the teen's parents, but this is so fucking funny (bet they loled too).

Pro-tip if you ever read it: This isn't over when you close the book. It's the last sentence on the back about what John and Jim are up to now that really marks the end. So don't spoil the ending for yourself. (Not to brag, but I gotta say: I had a hunch.)

>>24619
>>24620
"Settling" this question means standing on the side of the oppressed, organizing to bring about a revolution that negates white colonial identity through socialism-communism. Similar stuff to the proletariat doing a revolution that in the end is gonna negate the proletariat itself.

Unfair critics of J Sakai point to a supposed demobilizing tone in his main book but it's really a descriptive analysis of a particular form of oppresion that hinders worker's solidarity by making racists side with the bourgeoisie and petit borgeoisie. The point is to demystify white ideology whenever possible, not being afraid at times (sometimes, most times) to be a minority because you don't go pander to the lowest conscious workers.

Finished the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's advice how to face destiny like a Vulcan from Star Trek. Felt pretty meh. So I guess it succeeded and made me a Stoic. That's means it's good. Now I have feelings, that can't be good. Meh. *brain stuck in loop*

>>24632
Did you tell your wife’s boyfriend about how great the book is?
Gaylord

>>24614
Partway through Anarchism or Socialism, working through the implications of "content precedes form".
Would that mean the nature vs nurture model for development is mostly bullshit then? Considering it argues that the phenotype of an individual would be partly a result of their environment (nurture), and partially a result of their nature (genetics). While content (environment) precedes form implies that the environment determines gene expression too, and therefore only the environment is responsible for the form of an individual.

>>22717
The leftypol twitter account (leftypol_org) Is now shilling for this incoherent book with a pinned tweet.

Slowly making my way through De Leon's works on the marxist internet library thing. I think I really like De Leon's ideas!

i’m wondering if he likes me
i’m bi

Finished Fundamentals of Scientific Management of Socialist Economy (USSR, 1989). Has anyone else ever failed as hard as the nameless authors of this "work"?

Look at this. LOOK AT IT:
<The essence of profit-and-loss accounting is in its principles whose practical implementation actually means profit-and-loss accounting.
Page 65.

The text is like a turd from a ghost. These are the educated people that brought down the Soviet Union.

Currently reading Limits To Capital and have made it near to the end of the second chapter.

The first is legitimately exciting as it concerns the general principles of Marx's foundation for his critique in Capital, can't remember the last time I felt so engaged by a book despite the fact that Harvey wrote it in the 70s.

Currently at the end of the second chapter where he discusses the foundation of value theory and its role in the distribution of wealth principally as it regards the exchange mechanism and the mediation of forces that operate through this in the realm of production.

Could anybody recommend a reading list for political economy on the foundation of Marx's writings, or for that matter any similar texts or authors like Harvey's?

I'm looking to gain a solid foundation in Political Economy so I can set about creating a research project and begin specialising my readings, but aside from the basic texts of Marx and his historical Materialism, along with Lenin, I have no idea where to begin.

Just read an interesting essay about Scrappy-Doo and what that tells you about society, and no, this is not a shitpost.
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2022/04/02/scrappy-doo-bad-objects-and-how-fandoms-think/

Finished Responding to the Right by Nathan J. Robinson (2023). The book's promise is "25 Brief Replies to Conservative Arguments". It contains 25 essays with tons of footnotes. I suppose one could argue these essays do contain the brief replies and the reader just needs to cut down the text, but the book would be so much more effective if it had been short. What strikes me how fair the writer is. He seriously reads all sorts of drivel by conservatives and reflects on it. Meticulous to a fault. I don't actually believe they are that serious about themselves.

He praises unionizing. One of his examples is journalists. He shares an anecdote about how he was fired from the Guardian as a non-union writer for criticizing US military aid to Israel in a tweet. He doesn't share an anecdote about the journalists at his own magazine Current Affairs trying to unionize. He yeeted them. (I actually think he was right to yeet them because by democratizing the publishing process they would have destroyed the magazine's identity.)

>>24747
>political economy
here's a basic reading list:
- hesiod, works and days (700 B.C.)
- xenophon, oeconomicus (360 B.C.)
- xenophon, on revenues (355 B.C.)
- aristotle, oeconomica (350 B.C.)
aristotle, nicomachaen ethics, book 5, chapter 5 (350 B.C.)
- aristotle, rhetoric, book 1, chapter 7 (340 B.C.)
- aristotle, politics, book 1 (330 B.C.)
- the book of matthew (80 A.D.)
- the book of acts (90 A.D.)
- thomas aquinas - summa theologica, II-II.Q.77 (1275)
- matthew cooke M.S. (1450 A.D.)
- william petty, a treatise of taxes (1662)
- william petty, verbum sapienti (1665)
- william petty - quantulumcunque concerning money (1682)
- daniel defoe, robinson crusoe (1719)
- benjamin franklin - on paper currency (1729)
- richard cantillon - an essay on economic theory (1755)
- francois quesnay - tableau economique (1759)
- adam smith - wealth of nations (1776)
- james anderson - origin of rent (1777)
- david ricardo - principles of political economy (1817)
- james mill - elements of political economy (1821)
- friedrich list - national system of political economy (1841)
- karl marx - grundrisse, introduction (1858)
- karl marx - grundrisse, fragment on machines (1858)
- karl marx - value, price and profit (1865)
- karl marx - capital, vol. 1 (1867)
- friedrich engels - synopsis of capital (1868)
- william stanley jevons - theory of political economy (1871)
- carl menger - principles of economics (1871)
- karl marx - capital, vol. 2 (1878)
- karl marx - notes on wagner (1882)
- karl marx - capital, vol. 3 (1883)
- friedrich engels - supplement to capital, vol. 3 (1883)
- henry george - progress and poverty (1891)
- silvio gesell - the natural economic order (1906)
- john maynard keynes - general theory (1936)
- georges bataille - the accursed share (1949)
- murray rothbard - confiscation and the homestead principle (1969)
- david graeber - debt: the first 5,000 years (2011)
- l. randall wray - modern monetary theory (2012)
- kojin karatani - the structure of world history (2014)
- michael hudson - and forgive them their debts (2018)
- todd mcgowan - pure excess (2025)

>>24771
Been reading more SSDT (Serious Scooby-Doo Theory) from the same mysterious internet person. It's really good!
>>24794
I bet you haven't read even half of that yourself you fucking pseud. Oh and this:
>david graeber - debt: the first 5,000 years
is garbage. See:
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/01/the-myth-of-graeber/
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/again-graeber/
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/graeber-history/
(Yeah it's by the very same Scoobydologist I'm shilling here.)

>>24796
>I bet you haven't read even half of that yourself you fucking pseud
why would i recommend something im not familiar with? i dont recommend alfred marshall, despite him being such an important figure, because i havent read him, for example.
>graeber
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/01/the-myth-of-graeber/
>money is not debt
to marxists, money is a universal equivalent commodity which embodies value so as to be equated with other commodities. to a marxist therefore, either the paper banknote in your pocket has inherent value or simply represents value. as we know, currency is issued based on credit, and so directly represents debt. the debt itself is then considered money. graeber's simple reverse-engineering is to show this to be a transhistorical reality, which breaks the minds of bitter marxoids. money itself has no value, so marx's value-form dialectic is bunk.
>value can be quantified outside a medium of exchange in barter trade
aristotle speaks on this (nicomachaen ethics, 5.5) in terms of supply and demand, but never labour values; it is smith who proposes the myth of barter being regulated by labour-time for this reason. marx (capital vol. 1, ch. 2) also says that barter itself is a trade of unequal use-values, not exchange-values, so there is no quantified standard of value here (since to marx, this would only begin in the elementary value form, which has already transcended barter). aristotle further states that it is money itself which grants commensurability, which he says is created by the state, not by "impersonal forces". xenophon in "on revenues" also states that gold is as valuable as silver as a medium of exchange, and so he wants to expand the money supply by focusing on silver mining by slaves. money is not a commodity possessing value then, but is the social token which allows values to be accounted for.
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/again-graeber/
>graeber believes that money is an inherent principle of society, yet graeber also sees its historical character and wants to overcome it
contradictions from the author of the blog, who instead wants us to imagine that if two organisms trade goods, they inherently establish a value relation, rather than value creation being a regime forced upon people. who is establishing a conceptual homo economicus now?
https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/graeber-history/
>its silly to see how equality is an immanent condition of exchange, and we should abandon such notions.
ironic, since marx praises commodity exchange in the same way smith and graeber do, here:
<"This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself." [capital vol. 1, ch. 6]
will the blogger now scold marx for being a bourgeois apologist, who praises the sphere of circulation and imagines that trade is a beneficial aspect of our being?

>>24799
Oh my god you have your very own series of "political economy" threads to shit up with your quarter-baked ideas and fabricated quotes. Can you keep it there.

>>24800
>sagepost
>no counter-argument
just stay out of things you dont understand.

>>24801
You want to have an argument about you fabricating quotes?

>>24802
fabricated? i provided the source within in the quote:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
>This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.
will you now retract your groundless accusation? or perhaps you will even criticise marx for saying something that you clearly disagree with, so as to make the accusation against me in the first place…

>>24803
Now do that for all quotes.

>>24804
which quotes have i not provided sources for?

>>24805
Are you schizophrenic? Do you not know what a quote is?

>>24806
which quotes have i not provided sources for?
give me one example. here is my citation in this thread:
>>24799
<"This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself." [capital vol. 1, ch. 6]
the source is provided within the very quote, at the end, as i have already stated. so what other quotes have i failed to source? or are you just admiting to your illiteracy, that you never actually read what i posted and all this wasted time is due to your primary error? either way, you only make yourself look worse with every thoughtless reply, met with your unapologetic countenance. maybe its due to your cognitive dissonance; you clearly disagree with marx's words but are dogmatically compelled to believe him, regardless. i'll provide one more quote for you to consider:
>Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late [18]70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_05.htm

>>24808
…
Can you just link what your post in this thread are and do a count for each post how often it appears to quote from a text?

wtf is praxis

>>24810
Unity of theory and practice

>>24809
thats the only quote i posted. first you attack me for providing sources on political economy, then you call graeber garbage without justification, by surrogation of a random blogger - then you accuse me of lying because of your own mistake, and now you wont just admit that you have been wrong this whole time. you started wrong and youre ending wrong too. weirdo.

>>24812
Is this your post: >>24799 ? Four times you seemingly quote with green text from links. Are these actual quotes?

>>24819
according to imageboard etiquette, greentexting often directly quotes something, or generalises it in a rhetorical style. in this case, i was summing up various points of contention with the blogger rather than needlessly patching together paragraphs to make a counter-point. so they were not meant to be interpreted as direct quotes, no (and it seems strange to question this to begin with since you are the one who posted the blogs in the first place - did you not read these either?)

>>24822
You are not summarizing anything. You are fundamentally misrepresenting what these articles are about. The first article says that contrary to Graeber's claim, quantifying a debt relation does not require money. You "interpret" the article as stating "money is not debt" and then "reply" to it by claiming it must be. Do you note how this is not the actual argument? Also note how the article directly quotes Graeber claiming quantification requires money and is not reading that into him.

(In addition to being off-topic, your statement is wrong too. A sovereign state can issue its own currency, and while this can be used to pay tax debts, it does not directly represent debt, since it does not need to correspond 1:1 to existing debts. The state can create tax debts at will at any point, not necessarily in tandem with issuing more currency. Note I'm not reading something into you, I can directly quote you: "currency is issued based on credit, and so directly represents debt".)

If you want to continue with this and go through the other statements with me, first admit to being wrong here.

>>24824
>contrary to Graeber's claim, quantifying a debt relation does not require money
what is the measure of value, then? graeber's common sense claim is that money originates as a circulating debt in the form of credit tokens like IOUs. this is what money is, and without this, there can be no account for the exchange of mutual debts.
>You "interpret" the article as stating "money is not debt" and then "reply" to it by claiming it must be. Do you note how this is not the actual argument?
his argument is the marxian conjecture that money originated from barter, the same as smith. graeber's argument is chartalist; that money begins with the state, since the state is the accountant for social debts. this is the position of modern monetary theory also, following from keynes.
>quantification requires money
yes, because debt and money are the same thing. value is represented in its very quantum by money; this is even the position of more sophisticated marxists like michael heinrich (while marx still sees 3 previous value forms, which are nonetheless given no real historical context, since in the grundrisse, he is already taking reference from smith by seeing how in the iliad, there is a common measure of value (money) in oxen. the alternative is to presume a logistical necessity to trade, which the blogger also does; this amounts to aristotle's meagre analysis of supply and demand. yet marx sees barter as a form of unequal exchange (since it trades use-values, not exchange-values), so this contradicts the blogger's presumptions.
>A sovereign state can issue its own currency (and does not need to create debt)
this is why you should have read graeber, since he gives useful ways of understanding the relationship. if i have £1 this means that i am *owed* £1 worth of goods from a seller. the purchase of an item thus transfers this existing debt to a new person, circulating the conditions of demand. in other words, money in itself is deficient, and so is expressing a debt held by the possessor. to possess money then makes you poor by an inverse relationship, as smith understood in his classical analysis (i.e. the paradox of value). keynes also understood this well, and so did marx. you cant eat gold, but you can eat what gold can purchase - therefore, gold is useless, while still being valuable. what we call "value" therefore is an accumulated disutility, or debt. he who possesses the most debt is the most powerful - what does that tell you?

>>24825
>what is the measure of value, then?
You don't need to measure value to quantify debt. You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you bothered with just giving a tiny bit more attention to what you read (or rather "read"). Read the lines before trying to read between the lines.
>his argument is the marxian conjecture that money originated from barter, the same as smith.
The article distinguishes between the origin theories in Marx and Smith.

>>24826
>You don't need to measure value to quantify debt
debt is a quantity sum which is owed to a creditor. when the creditor is giving debt to a borrower, how is it measured outside of money? to graeber, the debt is monetised in circulating tokens (IOUs). the circulation of itens precedes debt economies however, by means of gift economies, which become increasingly reciprocal and eventually form commodity exchange (so, we begin interpersonally with unquantified obligations, move to socially quantified debts in the state and then further, toward commodity exchange). as graeber writes, the gift exchange is one of mutual obligation (which we would call "favours" today), where loyalty and friendship is solidified by bonds of reciprocity and forgiveness. this is why in my country, it is custom for everyone to buy a round of drinks at the pub, and so it suffices as symbolic exchange (where no long-term surplus is possible), like how in birthday cards, the same £20 circulates between hands. what is missing in a lot of economic discourse is the notion of circulation for its own sake. we see this most exemplified in gambling - and we know that people like to wager in games of any sort - even the stock market is just a form of professional gambling (in the iliad, book 23, the funeral games of patrocles give us an insight, where even the loser still received a prize. an issue we have today is that the losses of the game are socialised while the wins are privatised as a surplus - this would be like receiving money on your birthday but never giving anyone else money; it ruins the ritual).
>The article distinguishes between the origin theories in Marx and Smith.
and both are wrong.

>>24827
>>You don't need to measure value to quantify debt
>debt is a quantity sum which is owed to a creditor. when the creditor is giving debt to a borrower, how is it measured outside of money?
Quantity of a concrete item. (This was stated right at the beginning of the first article criticizing Graeber.)

>>24830
yes and so this item which comes into equivalence with everything else is the measure of value (i.e. money). graeber's point is that this item is standardised by authority of the state rather than spontaneously through impersonal market forces.

>>24831
>yes
It's good to see you agreeing that money is not necessary to quantify debt.
>and so this item which comes into equivalence with everything else is the measure of value
Does not follow.
>(i.e. money)
And now you make the point for commodity money even so just a moment ago you played the Chartalist. What role will you play next time? Are you even aware that you are changing roles constantly or is your attention window too small for that?

>>24839
>It's good to see you agreeing that money is not necessary to quantify debt.
what? you are directly proposing an object to represent debt so that it may be measured in this quantity (money).
>Does not follow
a measurement allows us to quantify something, and so it is brought into equivalence with everything else as a common unit. this is what separates qualities from quantities.
>And now you make the point for commodity money
how? commodity money implies that the token of value is itself valuable - i take aristotle's chartalist position that the state makes money, so is able to break it (gold may possess a real value, but if used as money it can only denote a nominal value - it costs more than a penny to make a penny). part of marx's criticism of fiat currency is that it assumes the possibility of decommodification, when according to the law of value, this is impossible. money is not a commodity; it is a decommodified σύμβολον (plato - politeia II, 371)
>Are you even aware that you are changing roles constantly
i have been entirely consistent. show me where i have deviated.

>>24840
>you are directly proposing [not my blog, but go on] an object to represent debt so that it may be measured in this quantity (money).
Have you actually read any of the articles or do you use ChatGPT to help you with that? The example from the article is not about "choosing" a measure of an imagined abstract debt, the concrete object is what is owed. So what is there is a concrete debt, and anybody (except you I guess) can quantify units of watermelons by counting units of watermelons.

>>24841
>the object is what is owed
debt makes no sense unless it is socially transferable, which means it applies to any number of objects of trade. if i borrow 3 of (X) and owe 4 of (Y) in return, an equivalent, or a loan with interest is implied, meaning that what debt measures is a standard of value, so acts as an accountable form of money. this is why the debt token circulates as an IOU which befalls the possessor in the form of repayment (i.e. taxation).

to put it more simply, how is the quantity of debt calculated beforehand, if there is no measure of the transferable value? the only alternative is to assume the unequal exchange of use-values, but this just runs into the double coincidence of wants of barter, which is insoluble in the context of debt, since debt implies the repayment of a fixed sum. what fixes the sum without equivalence? you are running into contradiction.

why is it hard to just admit that graeber is right; that debt is a monetised obligation, accounted for by the state, and so is transferable between persons?

>>19860
Trying to wrap my head around Value, Price and Profit for the second time, dyslexia be damned. Anyone have any companion pieces they'd recommend?