/edu/ checkpoint Anonymous 17-07-23 11:23:53 No. 19860 [Last 50 Posts]
Everytime you visit /edu/, post in this thread. Tell us about what you're thinking about, what you're reading, an interesting thing you have learned today, anything! Just be sure to pop in and say hi.
Previous thread
>>>/leftypol_archive/580500 Archive of previous thread
https://archive.is/saN3S Excuse me coming through
A quick note on the video @ >>>/leftypol/1538283
Also [vid related] for archival purposes
Around the 29 minute mark Peterson criticizes Marx and Engel's for assuming that workers would magically become more productive once they took over.
This actually happened historically, most of the actually effective productivity tricks work places use now were developed by Stakhanovites.
https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1936-2/year-of-the-stakhanovite/year-of-the-stakhanovite-texts/stalin-at-the-conference-of-stakhanovites/ Reality has a Marxist bias
Anonymous 17-07-23 14:49:52 No. 19862
Didn't read anything recently, but watched a movie about revolutionary times in our country. It's not fucking fair how it ended. Can't imagine what it must have been like for people participating in it when a simple re-enactment makes me want to off myself.
Anonymous 17-07-23 14:53:38 No. 19863
I can't seem to focus on any one thing at the moment so I keep switching back between a whole lot of shit. Probably not helpful long-term but oh well. Reading Anti-Oedipus and Massumi's secondary reading. also Ignorant Schoolmaster by Ranciere, and Sacred Conspiracy. For fiction going through the Hainish Cycle. If anyone has tips on building attention span/discipline/focus i would be grateful
Anonymous 17-07-23 14:55:22 No. 19864
>>19863 Part of it is sheer practice.
Given your current reading list, jumping between them is fine
though Anonymous 17-07-23 16:31:31 No. 19865
Don't mind me just carting some copypasta in for later use
Anonymous 17-07-23 17:40:08 No. 19866
Finished the audio books of ten days that shook the world and homage to Catalonia. They were much like when I read Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Che. I'm really digging the at-the-time type of reporting/writing/history. If anyone has any other suggestions I'd like to hear them. China or Mexico maybe?
Anonymous 21-07-23 01:14:42 No. 19893
I really need to stop collecting pdfs and buckle down, so I think what I'll do is see if I can finish off Cadillac Desert within a few days, then a choice between Melksins' the Origin of Capitalism a Longer View, Michael Beaud's a History of Capitalism, or another rec if any of you have one. I'm also looking for a good history of Mexico from the war of independence to the end of the 19th century (or porfiriato).
Anonymous 21-07-23 16:17:52 No. 19897
>>19893 My favorite nonfiction I’ve read over the past few years was Graeber’s book 5000 years of debt. It’s my number one rec. I’ve started just buying it for peoples birthdays.
Anonymous 30-07-23 20:46:41 No. 20077
Reading "Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa" (2014) edited by Scott Carter & Riccardo Bellofiore. Piero Sraffa had very little output, but left behind a massive archive of notes, which these essays make use of.
alunyafan 31-07-23 01:39:29 No. 20079
Anyone have any articles/books on "whiteness" as a political category? Especially when relating to the US
Anonymous 05-08-23 05:16:51 No. 20116
https://torrentfreak.com/230804/ <Z-Library Rolls Out Browser Extensions in Anticipation of Domain Name Troubles >Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has launched browser extensions that should make it easier for users to find the site if its current domains are seized in the future. While the site doesn't explicitly mention the U.S. Government crackdown, it likely plays a key role in the decision to make these extensions available. The extensions in question for both firefox and chrome in the second tab, along with other apps etc.
https://go-to-zlibrary.se/ Anonymous 05-08-23 07:30:08 No. 20117
>>20077 Saffra sounds like a nice read. How's it going?
Anonymous 06-08-23 16:59:51 No. 20134
>>19860 Been thinkin' bout plants. Also, I listened to series 3 of Blowback not too long ago, and it made me quite sad. S. Korea had their soverignity stolen from them by the USA, and they have now been browbeaten into thinking that the North is their mortal enemy.
I also read this article about the history of Taekwondo, and learned that it is intrinsically linked with the politics of the South and the North. I also learned that the version we're taught in the West is the sanitised version, and that the "original" version is still taught in the DPRK.
>Today in North Korea you can still see army commandos practicing “the original form of Taekwondo.” You might even see them practice the final form Choi Hong Hee ever designed, Juche. https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/when-taekwondo-ruled-the-world-by-jay Anonymous 15-08-23 14:21:04 No. 20173
Requesting details of the time/s when Stalin didn't want to continue being a leader and was voted in anyways.
Anonymous 17-08-23 10:36:21 No. 20181
>>20173 I haven't forgotten this, you're asking about Stalin's resignation attempts.
As a related sidenote, Stalin's attempts to cancel his birthday celebrations were met with a firm "it is not about you" for a sense of it.
In regards to the yootoob video attached; I have no words.
Anonymous 18-08-23 02:19:30 No. 20196
Reading Adolfo Gilly's book about the Mexican Revolution he wrote while in prison. Can't help but crack a smile when he uses "hue and cry" when describing the Mexican bourgeois press shitting its pants over the two revolutionary armies and the peasants seizing hacienda land in general
Anonymous 29-08-23 06:36:03 No. 20392
<However, traditional Marxism was often satisfied with Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation in Capital , volume I. This served as ‘proof’ of the illegitimate domination of the bourgeoisie and the legitimacy of proletarian revolution. His theory of crisis in volumes II and III were likewise understood as a ‘proof ’ of the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse. Capital was celebrated as a socialist ‘bible’ to ground both the legitimacy and the necessity of socialism, but such a reading is not compelling today and the failure of traditional Marxism is not necessarily a negative thing to lament. The end of the Cold War also opened up new possibilities for rereading Marx. What characterizes this ‘new reading of Marx’ (neue Marx-Lektüre ) compared with traditional Marxism is an honest acknowledgement of the incompleteness of his system of political economy. Scholars started to investigate his economic manuscripts, letters, and even notebooks more carefully (Dellheim and Otto Wolf 2018). They demonstrate that although volumes II and III of Capital were not completed during Marx’s lifetime, his critique of capitalism did deepen after the publication of volume I. However, the unfinished character of Marx’s critique of political economy has been underestimated in the past because it became invisible in Engels’s edition of Capital . Engels, editing Marx’s manuscripts after his death, strove to establish ‘Marxism’ as a doctrine to mobilize the working class. He tended to overemphasize the systematic character of Capital so that it could provide a universal ‘worldview’ for the working class. Marx in the Anthropocene (2022) by Kohei Sato, page 175. It is the follow-up to Karl Marx's Ecosocialism . While critical of western chauvinism, Sato is himself ultra-dismissive of the experience in the eastern block, a few negative remarks here and there (following western lefty academic "common sense") and that's it. Lenin is not a source for anything, but some anglo/burger academic randos are. Sato argues against pro-growth types, and he does that by equating economic growth with growth in a raw physical sense (think so many tons of steel produced etc.) and that he equates with more pollution. Is more pollution actually necessary for growth? Suppose person-miles traveled increase by 10 % while there is a per-mile reduction of pollution in personal travel of 20 %, that would be a counter-example (I admit a fictional example is not the best, read on please, a better one is coming up soon). Mainstream GDP measures take inflation into account and inflation measures do take quality of consumer goods into account (the increased processing power of computer chips for example, which certainly is not a development coupled with proportional increase in energy usage by computers). The fans of growth, whether radical or mainstream, are not quite as dim as Sato makes them appear.
Anonymous 30-08-23 01:25:20 No. 20401
does anyone have any sources on the idealogy of imperial japan? like, anything equivalent to the doctrine of fascism or mein kampf?
Anonymous 03-09-23 13:29:01 No. 20444
Slavoj Zizek - The Empty Gesture, The Mobius Strip, And The Pointe De Capiton
alt:
https://piped.video/watch?v=qKlIfax5Te0 Anonymous 17-09-23 00:53:22 No. 20539
Finished Sleep: A Very Short Introduction by Steven W. Lockley and Russell G. Foster (2012). Most interesting bits:<In a large prospective Dutch study, dementia patients in care homes where the indoor lighting was simply increased to about 1,000 lux from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (compared to standard lighting at about 300 lux) exhibited a significant slowing in the rate of cognitive decline, improved day-to-day functioning, less depression, and better sleep. These improvements were equivalent to those obtained with prescription medication therapy.
Anonymous 17-09-23 02:45:13 No. 20540
Got a copy of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World at my school's library!! probably should have at least finished Capital I lol but I've read a few of the lectures/pamphlets along with 18th Brumaire
Anonymous 18-09-23 00:26:42 No. 20542
>>20540 this guy is great, he's spent much of the second section going after the social analysis of people he disagrees with while laying out the one that he's going to be using
Anonymous 18-09-23 09:48:00 No. 20543
I'm looking for new stuff for read and usually used that old thread that listed some materials for beginners, I already looked at the manifesto and other must read stuff, thinking about going through state and revolution, or maybe capital or even German ideology
Anonymous 20-09-23 21:52:13 No. 20551
Could I get some recommendations on how the idea of queer rights have been co-opted to justify imperialism? I hear the "America is fighting for our right to exist" argument very frequently in my day-to-day life now for some reason.
Anonymous 23-09-23 19:53:17 No. 20559
I just read the first chapter of Value, Price and Profit.
Anonymous 21-10-23 20:17:27 No. 20857
Has anyone else ever been faced with the "America commits less oppression over time with power remaining constant" argument? It's easily debunkable by showing that what was previously done through military force is now done financially(I can't thank John Smith and Michael Hudson enough sometimes) but even then, this myth that America was ever somehow the benevolent empire not built among oppression(all of its history being "happy accidents" that could have been avoided with a similar economic result) seems prevalent, even among liberals.
Anonymous 21-10-23 21:40:24 No. 20861
>>20575 >I might be posting too many things on education in /edu/ Not possible, post more please
Anonymous 23-10-23 08:05:31 No. 20865
Is there a historical work that goes into detail on the trade-union work of the bolsheviks in the same vein that Hofheinz's The Broken Wave or Fanshen does for the Chinese Communists? I've found a book called Lenin and The Revolutionary Party that seems to touch upon the topic, along with The Young Lenin , and forgive me if I'm being impatient but I haven't seen any such material in the relevant chapters yet. Do I just need to read on, or should I go to other works that focus in deeper?
Anonymous 31-10-23 19:07:58 No. 20889
Lawyer anon, I'm back.
Anonymous 31-10-23 19:55:54 No. 20890
>>20889 That's good anon. Something is better than nothing too.
What type of books or advice are you looking for? I'm not sure such a thing exists tbh.
Anonymous 31-10-23 19:59:30 No. 20891
>>20890 Thanks, anon. I dunno, maybe something like the prince or Graeber's essays on bureaucracy to get into the mindset of working in local government?
Anonymous 31-10-23 20:01:59 No. 20892
>>20889 Honestly, a lot of working in big institutions is getting good at noticing how things operate. Just learn and talk to as much people as you can without impeding your work. Ask for a shit ton of help. Never stop asking for help, even from people "below" you. Always be keen on helping people and listening. Avoid drama or getting into fights. Always try to be in good graces with everyone. Avoid getting forced to choose a team in a petty squabble. Give credit to others. Appreciate your coworkers.
Everything else you'll learn on the job.
Another thing, "rules" and processes can always be overruled. Of course don't do illegal shit but I mean a lot of "rigid" processes are actually not rigid at all and pulling the right strings means you can override it or avoid it.
Anonymous 31-10-23 20:04:19 No. 20893
>>20891 I don't think those are good to prepare you for your work. Being depressive in your job, a la bullshit jobs can be counter productive. Have you ever read "how to win friends and influence people"?
Anonymous 31-10-23 20:20:21 No. 20894
>>20892 >>20893 I suppose that's reassuring. I'm pretty good at the awkwardly charming and sharing glory routine, it's part of the reason I got the job. The courts' staff like me. I guess I've just gone a little feral working on my own for the past year. Haven't worked in an office with more than 2 people in almost 7 years. It'll be strange to work along side other people and be part of a bigger whole.
Also I meant Graeber's The Utopia of Rules, not BS jobs. But BS jobs is a fun one. RIP. Miss that lil' guy like you wouldn't believe.
gayhat 31-10-23 20:33:26 No. 20895
i listened to an audio book of bartleby the scrivener by herman melville, and honestly…. it was kinda boring :/
Anonymous 01-11-23 01:57:30 No. 20896
Currently reading Taxation: A Very Short Introduction (2015) by Stephen Smith.<Over the OECD area as a whole, taxation accounted for 25 per cent of GDP in 1965, and 34 per cent in 2012, a growth of nine percentage points.
Anonymous 09-11-23 23:51:20 No. 20931
I would like to learn more about anarchism but I am currently a right winger so I don't know wear to start and 98% of right wingers are as dumb as pigeons and asking them is getting me nowhere so I lurk leftypol now.
other gayhat 16-11-23 16:58:09 No. 20952
>>20575 I wish I was patient enough to sit down and read this giant book. I have always wondered why nobody talks more about what unique class factors led to the creation of democracy in Greece.
Anonymous 16-11-23 21:34:27 No. 20954
>>20551 no recs, but don't they do this for everything, not just lgbt?
>point at country you installed right wing movement in or bombed into oblivion or forced religious nationalists to be the only political alternative to colonial rule >point to what rights exist in the US as propaganda for why further benevolent paternal control (financial, military, or governmental) is needed >never talk about how late we got our rights, or how weak they are, or how the same people who are doing imperialism on these cynical excuses are also trying to roll back our civil rights - and NEVER mention how socialist countries gave equality, reparations, or at least freedom from terror to various historically oppressed groups before the US did (and only after liberation movements in the US forced it to happen) Anonymous 18-11-23 18:29:13 No. 20962
getting book recommendations from dead authors feels magical
Anonymous 01-12-23 16:18:28 No. 20983
Almost teared up thinking about this excerpt from Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World again>There have, needless to say, been a few striking individual exceptions within the churches who have broken right away from their official policy, from John Ball in 1381 to Camilo Torres in our own time.
Anonymous 07-12-23 04:48:18 No. 20998
read the jewish state by herzl and some random papers on zionism and hamas during my breaks at work. may take a break from palestine and do some reading on the ussr since ive only really been flirting with commie stuff the past couple years. makes me a little sad that there is so much to learn even from the post ww2 era
Anonymous 09-12-23 10:07:52 No. 21000
Yeah I read theory…<I was right in the middle of purging when a little hand poked out from under the stall next to me with her Mickey & Friends autograph book, asking me to sign it. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
Anonymous 20-12-23 18:44:11 No. 21155
>>21004 I think Homer should have considered putting in more funny scenes and witty banter and one-liners between the characters. All that stuff about portraying the horrifying reality of senseless war, man's finitude and powerlessness against the universe etc is, like, just so old and boring, who even cares? I think the only reason it's survived for 3000 years is because people didn't yet find out about better Greek mythology media like Hades.
Anonymous 26-12-23 17:36:41 No. 21219
I am reading Eumeswil and Neither Vertical nor Horizontal.
Anonymous 27-12-23 00:46:51 No. 21220
New word acquired:<Since 1990 over 1,200 vultures in American airspace have become snarge, pilot lingo for the smeary remains of a bird. Crossings (2023) by Ben Goldfarb, a book about road ecology . Visible roadkill on your drive isn't a proper measure of damage to nature caused by roads, and not just because you fail to notice some tiny victims there, but also because they get quickly removed, sometimes by themselves (they hobble away and die a few hours later). Many animals are too afraid to cross a road with a few cars per minute, to them it's a moving wall, and perish of hunger. Just the road noise fucks them up bit time. (An experiment with speakers blasting road sounds where there is no road is described in the book.). Particles from tires get into the rivers and oceans:<Scientists would eventually pin decades of coho salmon die-offs on 6PPD-quinone,a chemical that manufacturers apply to tires to protect them from ozone.
Anonymous 27-12-23 23:45:44 No. 21222
As I finish the last page of 31 Steps to a Learn a New Language – Fun, Fast & Easy Steps Learn Any New & Foreign Language You Want. This Ultimate Guide Will Help You to Become Fluent With Joy an Strategy – 31 Steps to Learn Smarter – Smart Steps to Get Your Brain Up to Speed. Improve Your Life by Mastering Your Mind and Impress Everybody – Master Learning Box (2015) by Philip Vang I realize that the whole thing was written like email spam ☹<The authors, editors, and publisher have exerted every effort to ensure that any drug selection and dosage set forth in this text are in accordance with current recommendations and practice at the time of publication. However, in view of ongoing research blahblahblah <Paranormal and spiritual teachings aside, meditation is a very basic way to unleash the best function of your brain in a very scientific way. an strategy to a learn a new language? The author knows many: meditating, breathing techniques, yoga (yes, these are three separate steps), jogging, laughing exercises, playing video games, masturbation, having breakfast just to name a few. I'm sure most people are already doing some of these, but if you want to do them all, this will take several hours of your day; and that's just the 31 steps to get ready for language learning without doing it yet. My favorite steps from the other set directly related to language learning are "Step 27: Be Willing to Ask Questions" and "Step 28: Be Willing to Ask Questions".
Anonymous 29-12-23 09:14:31 No. 21229
Finished two books by authors from the now defunct International Socialist Organization (IS0). Both works target people who have potential to become socialists, so they are almost entirely about how capitalism is bad and how the US Democrats suck. The ISO line about the USSR and countries like Cuba is that Stalin betrayed socialism and that no socialist country exists atm. The line about the socialist future is there will be lots of committees voting on stuff, money accounting will be slowly phased out and things and services will be increasingly provided for free.The Case for Socialism by Alan Maass. Long, preachy, tedious. It was the third edition from 2010, the first came out in 2001 under the title "Why You Should Be a Socialist" and much shorter (if only I had known this…). It ends with obnoxious shilling for ISO books by the author, followed up with obnoxious shilling for ISO books by the publisher.Socialism … Seriously by Danny Katch (2015). Much better writing with plenty of jokes thrown in. Whatever you think of the specific positions, you should steal the writing style.
Anonymous 01-01-24 00:20:35 No. 21292
Filling out the Common App, came across the question "what works were important in your intellectual development" and wondering how Marxist I can go before it becomes a negative. Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century could go for or against me but putting Lenin would be suicidal, I assume. I actually have to consider this because everything I read outside of hard science is with the purpose of studying historical materialism or theory of political organization. If there's a better thread for this post just tell me.
Anonymous 01-01-24 01:10:45 No. 21293
>>21292 >wondering how Marxist I can go before it becomes a negative Zero. I'm not American and had to look up what Common App even is, but anyway: I would either mention urbanist libs like Jane Jacobs or stay clear of politics and history altogether. Maybe some inoffensive works about how fascinating math and physics can be (Martin Gardner, Feynman, Hawking)?
Anonymous 01-01-24 21:03:22 No. 21299
>>21219 who published Neither Vertical nor Horizontal? Was it with Historical Materialism journal? Or is it a book? i cant find it
Anonymous 02-01-24 03:29:54 No. 21303
>>21299 It’s also on libgen
Anonymous 07-01-24 03:13:04 No. 21362
Finished The Knowledge Corruptors by Colin Crouch (2016). Timid criticism of privatizing and treating citizens as customers. Crouch writes like a robot.
Anonymous 07-01-24 03:14:50 No. 21363
>>21362 The Knowledge Corrupt
e rs
Anonymous 16-01-24 22:13:31 No. 21402
Looking through OneFile for various names the Mercator Institute might go under, but coverage of the founding of the Mercator Institute for China Studies is markedly absent. Likewise, for their current director(Nis Grünberg) I can't find any google results prior to 2015, which immediately susses me out. Looking for connections he may have made in his schooling years will be difficult.
Anonymous 02-02-24 04:07:40 No. 21537
Started to look into the outsourcing and Google Books is producing very little in the way of history and more so in the way of management babble. Frustrating, but necessary background.
Anonymous 08-02-24 14:23:32 No. 21558
Zizek it not a Marxist. He is an Hegelian.
Anonymous 11-02-24 18:02:02 No. 21574
>>20865 Belated self-(You): Bonnell's
Roots of Rebellion seems to be the closest source I could find to this topic so far. If anyone has any further reading recs, do tell.
Anonymous 12-02-24 05:21:19 No. 21577
>>21574 Would it be worthwhile to do a thread comparing and contrasting the political forces of the American, Russian, and German labor movements of the 1910s? I've recently finished Brody's book, am starting this one, and would love further discussion on the topic.
Anonymous 13-02-24 19:25:59 No. 21580
Seething about the fact that I have an academic interest in explosives but I'm too spergy to hide my power level when questioned, at least by their standards
Anonymous 25-02-24 05:23:46 No. 21622
Finally picked up The Organizational Weapon , if only because it was the only book I could find of its type and focus apart from Roots of Rebellion .
Anonymous 02-03-24 13:53:35 No. 21642
Finished the Alan Turing biography by Andrew Hodges. A harrowing tale of the dangers of modern technology, because I got an e-ink device and I usually don't display the page number to have more screen real-estate. I only bothered to check after many hours in already and to my horror realized it's over a thousand e-ink pages (in paper form it's below that, but still). It is easily five times longer than it needs to be. If only I had so much as glanced at the dead-tree version, I would have immediately decided against reading it. I just can't abandon a book in the middle and this took me forever.<Alan Turing was sitting at his desk in Britain while being homosexual and he (Alan, not Alice in Wonderland) was frustrated by the complex signals of society he had to decrypt like the Nazi codes (remember those!) and he had to hide his homosexuality (he was gay), so to his colleagues he was a, ahem… 🤔 one could even say: an ENIGMA (I am very smart) blahblahblah
7ko 02-03-24 15:29:46 No. 21643
To stride anew?
Anyways it turns out the glowies might've killed Paul Robeson, and you mayyyyybe want to reconsider the efficacy of the "meds".
https://mronline.org/2024/02/27/according-to-his-son-civil-rights-icon-paul-robeson-was-a-victim-of-cias-mk-ultra/ Anonymous 03-03-24 06:25:16 No. 21644
Read
On the Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil (1943). There just was an episode about that text on the "You Can't Win" podcast and since it was a PREMIUM episode for paypigs and the hosts are much dumber than I am, I figured why not read it myself instead of listening to these dweebs yappering about it.
https://libcom.org/article/abolition-all-political-parties-simone-weil It also got a preface by the translator and another essay at the end about how great Simone Weil was, which I guess got added because you certainly don't get that impression of greatness from her essay. Here is a sentence from it:
<How many times, in Germany in 1932, might a Communist and a Nazi conversing in the street have been struck by a sort of mental vertigo on discovering that they were in complete agreement on all issues! Her and her two fanboys are in the anti-"totalitarian" camp, you see. It's a shame how anemic this piece is because there is certainly something to the idea that a party apparatus suppresses debate and honesty. When it comes to how to do away with parties she has nothing else than this:
<At election time, if contributors to a journal are political candidates, it should be forbidden for them to invoke their connection with the journal, and it should be forbidden for the journal to endorse their candidacy, to support it directly or indirectly, or even to mention it. Any ‘Association of the friends’ of this sort of journal should be forbidden. If any journal were ever to prevent its contributors from writing for other publications, it should be forced to close. <All this would require a complete set of press regulations, making it impossible for dishonourable publications to carry on with their activity, since none would wish to be associated with them. <Whenever a circle of ideas and debate would be tempted to crystallise and create a formal membership, the attempt should be repressed by law and punished. Well then, how to conduct elections without parties? She got nothing, but there are several ways.
1. We could take the concept of term limits to the next level: Instead of parties, there could be election groups with registered members and there could be regulations for
-how long you can be a member of an election group and then you have to take a time-out for a couple decades
-expiration dates for election groups themselves
-a limit on the proportion of members of the new election group who are from the same old election group (say 1/10)
-a minimum proportion of people with no prior membership in any election group for a new election group (say 2/3)
2. We could use voting systems without party lists like STV or approval with reweighting.
3. We could do away with elections and use sortition.
Anonymous 05-03-24 18:09:06 No. 21669
Just read catcher in the rye
Anonymous 07-03-24 23:53:14 No. 21670
Davies and Wheatcroft make the following claim:<while some peasants were richer than others, and in certain areas had formed a social group which in marxist terms exploited the majority of villagers, the kulaks had never been an easily recognis- able socio-economic group or cohesive political class. By the end of 1932 a million families or more of the richer or less obedient peasants had been expelled from their villages or had fled to the towns. The ‘kulak’ class in the villages no longer existed as a social or political group – though many peasants were disaffected because of the way their ‘kulak’ relatives and acquaintances had been treated. Years of Hunger , pg. 191)
Marija Spiridonova 10-03-24 16:33:21 No. 21707
I cannot see exploitation ceasing to exist under communism completely. Sure, it will get diminished, but still present, as exploitation is not limited to class. What's the solution to eradicate all forms of exploitation completely?
Alexandria Occasio Cortez 10-03-24 19:35:24 No. 21712
>>21707 >What's the solution to eradicate all forms of exploitation completely? It is necessery, to overcome all kinds of differences between individuals. Not only sex, age, nationality, intelligence etc. We must also overcome the species barrier. In order to truly eradicate all forms of exploitation, all differences must be sublated. Where differences are, there are strong and weak. As long strong and weak exists, there will be oppression/exploitation. Also the contradiction between the individual and the collective. Thinking this consequently to the end, we will only achieve the eradication of oppression, through the sublation of existence itself.In other words: The world must stop to exist. Or in the words of Kaneko Fumiko: "The goal of my activities is the destruction of all living things."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-res-kaneko-fumiko-because-i-wanted-to Alexandria Occasio Cortez 10-03-24 20:58:53 No. 21713
Baudrillard calls himself a nihilist, yet he assumes, that there is reality otherwise he wouldn't be able to conceptualize his idea of hyperreality. Another thing: If Baudrillard is an actual nihilist, why does he differentiate between reality and fiction at all? Is he fucking retarded?? There is no lie, when there is no truth. At the same time, Baudrillard gives in his writings the impression, that hyperreality is somehow "bad" (of course, real intellectuals like Baudriboi never boil it down to good/bad). Shouldn't we actually embrace the lie, the fake, the hyperreality like all real/fake nihilists do? So why did you wrote this book mr. nihilist?
Glowing Margaret Thatcher 10-03-24 21:12:44 No. 21714
>>21712 So basically, enshrine certain forms of exploitation and do nothing about them. Very cool.
Sass aside, which forms of exploitation would you consider unavoidable and therefore acceptable?
Anonymous 11-03-24 04:36:31 No. 21716
>>21715 Sure Rome won the Punic war due to having a much larger economy/population than Carthage but they famously suffered multiple embarrassing defeats that killed over a hundred thousand legionnaires and only won by attrition, that's probably what he saw happening to the US.
Anonymous 11-03-24 12:28:56 No. 21717
>>21714 >enshrine certain forms of exploitation and do nothing about them Where did I said this?
Anonymous 11-03-24 13:51:37 No. 21718
Finished Science Secrets by Alberto A. Martinez (2011) about pop-culture myths around Newton, Darwin, Galileo, and a lot about Einstein. I got it after the title was thrown at me in an online debate together with some ad hominem nonsense. The poster claimed that Galileo made up the story of dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (I hadn't even said anything about Galileo?) and this books supposedly debunks that. Turns out there are no writings by Galileo claiming that, so says this book. Hah!
Anonymous 11-03-24 20:40:06 No. 21719
Here is what I've learned today: The inventor of the metaverse also coined the term anglosphere.
Anonymous 12-03-24 17:14:46 No. 21721
I don't care for the EU institutions, yet I am required to know them by heart
Anonymous 14-03-24 13:33:16 No. 21727
<Marx Saw Capitalisms Doom With Unerring Accuracy Marx identified the tendency of capitalism to try and cut out the actual production of commodities in Volume 2 of Capital. In that work he (with a supplementary note by Engels) stated the following on page 137 of that work.
https://marxengelsinstitute.org/2023/12/10/an-end-long-predicted/ Anonymous 17-03-24 06:46:12 No. 21742
Skimming through Beyond Dispute by Stafford Beer and colleagues (1994). Beer is as pompous as Stephen Wolfram without having the math chops. This is about organizing people into discussion groups using the geometry of an icosahedron (20-sided die) as THE GOLD STANDARD and then there is a lot of babbling about psychology, Condorcet cycles (without calling them that), world citizenship, a (dumb) proposal for package sizes, and uuh Chakras.
Anonymous 17-03-24 17:19:06 No. 21749
>>21742 (me)
>Why not instead picture a 12-sided die as a mini planet of office dorks sitting at hexagonal tables *pentagonal tables
Anonymous 25-03-24 11:58:12 No. 21790
Finished What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub (2020), about Silicon Valley BS like disruption & failing better . Exactly the sort of book that the people who need the most won't read and that the people who do read already agree with.
Glownonymous 30-03-24 02:59:27 No. 21822
>>21644 omg she criticizes anti-factionalism of parties and her solution is to ban people to form factions… but for all society. Is this dialectics?
>>21670 Is this where Zizek gets his joke about the vague soviet definition of kulaks? lol
As far as the claim (well, which claim? I'm going with the last, that many other peasants were disaffected), with no knowledge of this specifically it does seem right when looking at feudal/rural-patriarchal relations in general. Social views are not only formed by class but also familial ties and tradition, especially in an especially traditional and family oriented social structure.
>>21714 Plants. I think it's okay to determine where a plant lives, and control some of the conditions of its life, and then harvest it. It's not like this is any different from its natural condition, so it's not like we have made its potential lot worse.
jk, i don't care about exploitation in general, i care about exploitation that is harmful to me and my loved ones [expansive], or which cause diffuse harm to all of society or the environment and can be assumed to impact us all. Otherwise, why care? To me communism is a deeply particular philosophy, rather than universal. Its universalism is imo a caricature given of it by conservatives who just don't see how materially connected all of our struggles are Anonymous 05-04-24 22:07:35 No. 21870
I'm new to theory but my untreated ADHD is a big obstacle. I read The Principles of Communism which was recommended to me as a beginner text but it felt more like reference material. I feel like I digest information much better when it's presented in conversation.
Wuhridenn 08-04-24 20:56:22 No. 21877
I'm just new here and trying to figure out how to use this website. I've never used 4chan or such (actually, i thought this site was a board on 4chan, and i spent few minutes there to find here).
Anonymous 09-04-24 20:04:22 No. 21879
>>21822 I was referring to the argument that the kulaks were never rigidly defined or easily identified.
Anonymous 09-04-24 20:07:09 No. 21880
>>21547 There's an article in
City & State New York that attempts to summarize relevant data up to 2018 that I found later, if nothing else.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2018/09/the-battle-for-hudson-yards/178151/ Anonymous 11-04-24 05:12:10 No. 21881
I've started theory as history by banaji, main thrust seems to be that a mode of production isn't necessarily equal to one form of exploitation. In that vein he kinda attacks "stageism". Honestly the only "theory" I've read is a bit of Capital 1, some Marx pamphlets/speeches about commodity productions and what G. E. M. de Ste. Croix and Perry Andersen say about modes of production and commodity production in their two big books about the classical Mediterranean so some things are going over my head but I'm liking it. Feel like I might want to buy it for myself one day since this is just a copy I asked my library to get me
Anonymous 25-04-24 07:58:31 No. 22001
Finished Marx and Marxism by Gregory Claeys (2018). This guy is apparently a distinguished professor and expert on the history of political thought. I would have never guessed that from reading this. It seems like an even-handed take at first with direct references, but as it goes on, outrageous quotes by Lenin, Stalin, Mao pile up and the sources turn out to be spooky western cold warriors. Or there is no source at all like when he says that Marx claimed us proles to be particularly<virtuous <was threatened with execution by some communists for introducing these issues <the proletariat’s suppressed sexual urges prevented it from achieving political consciousness. <the weaknesses in Marx’s economics transformation problem , despite the length of this book. A few sentences on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is all you will get here (without even relating that to organic composition of capital). For the most part, he doesn't really criticize, but gestures that he is about to do criticism, like he "criticizes" Marx for his<‘scientific’ nature of the theory of surplus value, while excluding other theories of exploitation <Pleas for a universal basic income become increasingly plausible as we move towards both more skeletal welfare systems and a persistent shortage of well-paid jobs. exception clause is triggered).
Acid-Maoist 01-05-24 18:26:10 No. 22040
>>19860 I've been reading Caroline Elkins' book Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire recently, and I thought I'd talk about it a bit. No PDF or Epub, because I have it in hardback.
The book is actually just as much a history of liberalism as a history of the British Empire, and it's fascinating seeing how the liberal mindset came into existence. Reading the examples from the book, you can really see where the paternalistic British liberal originated, with the idea that we must save the global south from themselves. Hence, African leaders famously complaining about how when China turns up they get a power plant, and when Britain turns up they get a lecture; it was the same back then, but Britain actually had the hard power to back up their rhetoric.
It also explains how Britain's use of force changed between the 18th and 20th centuries, with Britain preferring a "hands-off" approach in the 19th century which gradually failed as Germany, the USA, and the Russian Empire began to industrialise and compete for territory (there's an interesting parallel with America and China in the 21st century, too). Occasionally news of some atrocity that was comitted by the British Army (or one of the private companies they got to manage the colonies, such as the East India Company or the Royal Africa Company) would reach home, and there would inevitably be debates about it in parliament- which usually ended with the crimes being somehow justified and then forgotten about, and occasionally with the perpetrators turned into heroes (the 1857 Indian rebellion and the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion are two good example from the book).
The book isn't specifically Marxist, but is still well worth reading from what I've seen so far.
Ultra-İttihadist 01-05-24 20:05:14 No. 22042
I want to write a leftypedia article.
Anonymous 05-05-24 14:11:03 No. 22056
I don't have much motivation to read anymore. Even reverse-engineering Capital hasn't given me the insight to research and make independent analysis on even a city level. I suppose I'm just a midwit.
Anonymous 05-05-24 15:38:40 No. 22057
>>22056 Marx lived in simpler times.
Anonymous 09-05-24 10:41:43 No. 22071
Finished The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane (2012). The myth is that people just are just naturally endowed with charisma or not and the book is about developing your charisma. Here is a typical excerpt:<Elon Musk, cofounder of PayPal and current CEO of Tesla Motors, embodies focus charisma. As he’ll tell you himself, Musk is very much an introvert. In Tesla’s open office space, his nearly empty desk is in the far right corner, two huge monitors arranged to create a cocoon, shielding him from the rest of the office. does command the room; his presence is immediately felt. If your definition of charisma is that when you walk into a room all eyes are on you, then Bill has it. If it’s that quality that draws people toward you and makes them want to listen to what you have to say, then Bill has that, too.
Anonymous 09-05-24 16:47:59 No. 22075
>>22071 I wonder what kind of charisma someone like Lenin or Mao has under the author's classification system.
Anonymous 09-05-24 17:59:27 No. 22077
>>22076 I read that monthly review article a little while ago it was pretty good. I'll have to get around to reading the destruction of reason one day.
Anonymous 09-05-24 18:02:01 No. 22078
>>22077 it's fun if you're autistic about Germany as many people on this board presumably are
Glownonymous 11-05-24 01:03:11 No. 22083
>>22071 It's weird that the author seems to only pick people who naturally would have all eyes on them (managers/owners, performers, politicians) as having charisma that draws people to them?? The only one who makes sense here
>>22081 is Mao, since his political praxis consisted of listening to people. But still… leader of a country.
Anonymous 11-05-24 02:32:10 No. 22085
>>22083 Stalin was also good at listening.
Anonymous 11-05-24 21:59:44 No. 22095
I can't remember the thread in which I read the post, but for some reason an online media group had moved to quote a 19 year old 'book-fan' of Dostoyevsky's literature, in order to hear from her an understanding of the draw among young people to his works.
Anonymous 11-05-24 22:10:54 No. 22096
>>22095 a politically castrated subject with absolutely no capacity for valid self-reflection.
Glownonymous 16-05-24 00:51:48 No. 22113
>>22085 I just finished Cecelia Bobrovskaya's memoirs, and she describes Lenin as an amazing listener (and Plekhanov, too, in passing - she was inspired by how he took interest in the minutia of practical work)
I think it's just inherent to communist work that we need to be good listeners. Still, my skepticism at the potentially circular methodology of the work stands lol
Glownonymous 16-05-24 01:02:02 No. 22114
>>22113 (me)
to review the book: very funny, very human. I think it would be a fun read even to non-communists.
Really the only practical lesson I learned from it is that the semi-committed, spineless, well-off intellectual types served a very important function, by stitching back together local socialist groups after big busts. They were above suspicion and kept themselves legal, so they would be there when everyone else was in jail or scattered. It really puts weight behind Lenin's exhortations to go to
all classes to spread the ideas and look for comrades. Even though the illegal socialists engaged in constant practical work were suspicious of the strictly legal semi-comrades, they served a purpose in being only somewhat connected to the more serious activity.
Anonymous 16-05-24 03:12:12 No. 22115
im reading phenomenology of spirit HOLY SHIT what am i reading???? half of it makes sense and i can agree with fully and the other half i have NO idea what is even being said. i am reading it alongside lectures on phenomenology by alexander kojeve. i am looking forward to reading capital with a better base of understanding of dialectics but goddamn
Glownonymous 16-05-24 16:56:09 No. 22116
>>22115 read the Logic instead (or… next)
Anonymous 16-05-24 22:56:15 No. 22119
>>22067 Is this an accidental reply, a reference to something, or something else I'm too ignorant to get?
Anonymous 19-05-24 13:25:46 No. 22125
Currently reading the politics of heroin, wondering if anybody has any book recommendations about the history of immigration laws in the US, or just the history of immigration in general.
Anonymous 22-05-24 21:58:25 No. 22147
<The philosophy underlying the system of progressive taxation is that the income and the wealth of the well-to-do classes can be freely tapped. What the advocates of these tax rates fail to realize is that the greater part of the income taxed away would not have been consumed but saved and invested. In fact, this fiscal policy does not only prevent the further accumulation of new capital. It brings about capital decumulation. This is certainly today the state of affairs in Great Britain.
Glownonymous 24-05-24 22:58:38 No. 22156
I've been reading a lot of right wing edgelord lit recently. Its exhausting. There isn't really much too it beyond bashing the libs. Outside of that, their ideas are usually just wallflower liberalism mixed in with various shades of more or less explicit genetic racism, odd references to the occult and mysticism (90% of which is inaccurate), and bitching. Its literally just tribal white idpol SJWism. What a waste of my time.
Anonymous 25-05-24 17:28:04 No. 22159
Finished Two Texts for Defining the Communist Programme by L. L. Men (1986). For LLM, socialism requires labour vouchers as described in Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx and Anti-Dühring by Engels, as well as democratic bottom-up voting with the right to recall as in the Paris Commune. By that standard, the USSR was not socialist at any point. Was the USSR moving towards socialism? For LLM it is clear that the Bolsheviks stopped pushing in a socialist direction before the NEP even. LLM shows some awful statements by Lenin and even worse ones by Trotsky, but does not accuse the Bolsheviks of conspiring against the working class from beginning. In general, conscious intention of individuals or groups do not play a big role in the author's picture of history. LLM is also very critical of basically everybody from the Workers' Opposition to the Kronstadt Sailors, anarchists, and various grouplets like the SPGB.The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 Volume 2 by E. H. Carr (1952), referring to discussion about abolishing money:<In January 1920 the third All-Russian Congress of Councils of National Economy at length accepted a thesis which declared that, "in view of the excessive instability of the monetary unit and unit of account (the ruble) ", it was desirable to establish a new unit of economic accountancy " adopting as a basis of measurement the unit of labour ".[1] This proposal was referred to a commission. It occupied for many months the best economic brains of the country; and the term "labour unit" became familiar enough to be known by a current abbreviation as tred (trudovaya edinitsa ). <[1]Quoted in L. N. Yurovsky, Currency Problems and Policy of the Soviet Union (1925), p. 34; it was not included in the published resolutions of the congress. <None of several schemes for replacing money by tred or by some other unit had won acceptance when the introduction of NEP caused the whole project to be relegated once more to the realms of academic speculation.[1] <[1]The discussion occupied an enormous place in the economic literature of 1920 and the first month of 1921; a rival to tred was propounded in the form of a "unit of energy" (ened ). A detailed study of the discussion would have some theoretical interest, but it had little or no influence on future developments. It was influenced by two works of the German economist Otto Neurath which were much studied by Soviet writera of the period: Durch die Kriegswirtschaft zur Naturalwirtschaft (Munich, 1919), and Von der nächsten und übernächsten Zukunft (Jena, 1920).
Glownonymous 25-05-24 18:53:29 No. 22163
What's a book that will help me understand chinlet psychology?
Anonymous 04-06-24 05:09:26 No. 22263
>>22163 Kill all normies by angela nagle
Anonymous 05-06-24 03:21:22 No. 22264
>>22156 Now answer the question; why is liberalism so vapid that men consider this a better alternative?
Anonymous 11-06-24 22:58:07 No. 22284
Finished I've Been Thinking , the 2023 autobiography by the materialist philosopher (though not Marxist) Daniel C. Dennett (born in 1942, died in 2024). A massive cast flashes by, mostly academics, but also Silicon Valley types and even Hollywood.<[John] Searle’s world is full of philosophical nincompoops; mine is full of philosophers who are learned, intelligent, hard-working but often self-defeating presenters of their best ideas. Why would anybody want to be a philosopher if philosophers in general were as stupid as Searle seems to think? (Sir Karl Popper is another philosopher whose low opinion of those who disagreed with him has made me wonder how he could stand being a philosopher.) Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking ).brain-trust lunch . If you care to know what I mean by that, you can find the book on libgen.
Glownonymous 19-06-24 06:37:26 No. 22329
>>22284 >meeting the Antichrist at the TED brain-trust lunch That is absolutely where you'd expect them
Anonymous 19-06-24 16:02:04 No. 22332
The more I read The System's Greatest Trick the more I'm convinced Ted already believes in dialectical materialism and the concept of revisionism but feels the need to dress it in different language.
Anonymous 20-06-24 02:29:19 No. 22335
Finished A Framework for Representing Knowledge by Marvin Minsky (1974). Supposedly about AI, this is super wishy-washy and doesn't lead anywhere. I now believe Minsky wasn't good for anything, maybe even delayed the development of AI with his polemics against Perceptrons.
Anonymous 21-06-24 04:44:28 No. 22337
Lawyer anon here. Was reading an old professors book on local Chicano history and I was so blinded by rage by his repeated use of the phrase middle class I remembered lefty pol existed.
Anonymous 25-06-24 07:07:48 No. 22345
Just finished reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (I highly recommend this for everyone) and next on the reading list is Atomic Habits.
Anonymous 25-06-24 23:31:08 No. 22347
Thinking about industries where the leading capitalists are seemingly beyond competition. Does anyone have an analysis on the semiconductor industry and TSMC's ascendancy? It seems that there can be no tendency towards falling rate of profit when the closest competitors are years behind, and that's assuming SMIC can make do without EUV. Global Foundries and Intel are even worse off.
Anonymous 28-06-24 19:42:30 No. 22360
DAE struggle nowadays to take leftist lit seriously? I ate contemporary stuff up a few years ago but I'm pretty jaded ow and find the prose of leftist authors so fucking preachy, predictable and sophist. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading the fucking Illiad with the amount of epithets that leftists use. God forbid one mentions any rightoids name, even tangentially, and you'll get several qualifiers reminding you the guy's bad. The same tropes and the same examples even in wildly different contexts. I used to find academic 'non-political' i.e. vaguely liberal academic works boring, yet now I prefer them covering the same topic over a leftie author.
Anonymous 28-06-24 22:06:24 No. 22362
>>22361 (So far I am undestanding only a third of it D:)
Anonymous 29-06-24 20:14:26 No. 22366
Finished some Spengler just recently. Is it just me, or is he kind of a dummy who butchers any concept he uses and just talks out of his ass? I'll go back to reading Lenin.
Anonymous 29-06-24 21:13:20 No. 22367
>>22366 Yes, Spengler is a bullshitter. His scheme is arbitrary and there are countless counter-examples to any grand tendency or principle he claims, and his stuff is riddled with errors. (I haven't read Spengler, but his annihilation:
Anti-Spengler by Otto Neurath. Available in German as part of
Otto Neurath - gesammelte Philosophische und methodologische Schriften. Band 1 .)
Anonymous 30-06-24 14:40:32 No. 22373
Also, how come Nietzsche opposed socialism? I am reading him and he sounds like an outright Marxist.
Anonymous 30-06-24 17:29:28 No. 22376
>>22373 >He was critical of French Revolution and was deeply disturbed by the Paris Commune which he saw as a destructive insurrection of the vulgar lower classes that made him feel "annihilated for several days" I haven't read any Nietzsche but If I had to guess it would be his whole philosophy(as far as I can tell) boils down to suffering being necessary cuz le superman will overcome and embrace it or sum shit like that. I'd imagine you'd run into a similar problem socialist do with abrahamics since both philosophies see the suffering on earth as a giant test to separate the good from the bad people that you can never ever change that ergo trying to alleviate this suffering is "cheating" so to speak. From their perspective Its like we're handing out an answer sheet before the final exam. Anons have recommended me the destruction of reason by Lukacs which I believe has a section on Nietzsche and is all about how a huge chunk of western philosophy are just elaborate excuses for empire. That being said this whole post is just guesswork and conjecture.
Glownonymous 01-07-24 19:20:55 No. 22380
>>22347 tech sector in general functions largely in the rent sphere, because of IP
But also in general monopolies form out of competition as smaller firms fail to be sufficiently profitable. You'd expect this kind of monopoly firm to have lower margins. Once this happens, monopolies can raise prices to increase margins, but what this is in effect is lowering of the price of money of the whole economy, i.e. reducing wages. In this case consumption suffers and what prevails is necessities. Land rents, utilities, and food (also priced based on land rents) are the most profitable. We see empirically a shift in the economy for a while now in the US e.g. first away from industry, then away even from commerce, to finance, (tech), and land rent. In terms of both top companies, sectors leading gdp growth, and overall share of profits. So there's a long-term trend away from capitalist profits towards rent, as capital burdens production rather than promotes it. Anyways tech is tied heavily with finance and IP rents (and also state intervention and military needs) and so is doing relatively well. I'd see it in that light. Also expect more state expenditure as surplus value with nowhere to go builds up. So again, military spending, infrastructure (lol if we're lucky), state investment and buyouts, etc.
Anonymous 03-07-24 23:57:02 No. 22396
>>22380 I'm reading Lenin's Imperialism now and he covers monopolies convincingly in the first chapter.
Anonymous 06-07-24 06:02:09 No. 22406
Can someone recommend a good history lecture series? I like reading but I also like a lecturer to do some of the "animating" for me.
Anonymous 09-07-24 04:35:46 No. 22440
I found my old copy of the communist manifesto. It was printed in Burgereich in the 60s so a third of it is a seething liberal introduction about how the Lenin was bad and misinterpreted Marx, but also Marx is a hack. Surprisingly no Stalin eated all the grain, but maybe they hadn't made that one up yet. I'm beginning to feel the Manifesto is not really a great introduction because it spends most of its time on romantic myth building. Workers today are so far removed from the feudal mode of production that it is irrelevant. Wage Labor and Capital explains a lot more relevant topics in a more digestible style though it is a bit longer. Does anyone have a recommendation for a less dated pamphlet length work?
Anonymous 09-07-24 14:46:15 No. 22444
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Anonymous 10-07-24 23:41:43 No. 22460
>>22459 Greetings I hope you enjoy your time here anon. Hows the book? is that Mansa Musa on the cover? Now theres a guy who knows how to have a good time
Anonymous 11-07-24 19:31:52 No. 22462
I've read most of "Four Thousand Weeks" which, I think, helped me a lot in fighting my perfectionism and reading more regularily. Before reading this book I was always upset about my low understanding or distracted by the facts that various books can give me different perspectives on the subjects I am reading about. Now whenever I'm anxious about productivity I try to tell myself that nothing I do is perfect anyway and I can't fully control my attention/time. Anyway, I decided to try to set a 3 hours goal for studying of whatever general subject I have in mind everyday.
Anonymous 13-07-24 00:28:40 No. 22466
>>22462 that economic history shit sounds intertesting af anon, once I get around to reading that richard wolff book that explains different economic schools, I'll make this my next economic book.
My big problem is that I always end up half way through five books at the same time and it then takes me a ridiculous time to finish any of them. tbh what helped me get my reading hours up was putting small books in the car and backpack(s) so that if im ever randomly board I can just read instead of doomscrolling social media
Anonymous 17-07-24 00:23:25 No. 22485
Finished watching jojo and realized I needed to fucking read some books. Decided to just say “fuck it lol I’m not going to remember this shit might as well practice speed reading” and finished Graeber’s pirate book and a how to be invisible by that hacker guy the fbi caught in the 90s. Graeber is the fucking best RIP. anarchist pirates intermingling with the anarchist Madagascar peoples. Neat shit. Other book was fine. Mostly obvious shit like tor and https everywhere and pass phrases and get homeless people to buy gift cards for you that you convert into bitcoin. Decided on some fiction. About halfway through bukowskis mailman book. Sometimes it hits close to home regarding his drinking and working hungover and settling on sad/broken women. I like how every chapter is a page long and every chapter ends with a punchline yet the story moves forward. I like that I’m not ACTUALLY COMPLETELY like him. I should write up a list of all the audio books I’ve gone through in the past year. This post was only actual books read.
Anonymous 17-07-24 00:37:58 No. 22486
>>22485 saw a copy of the graeber book while doing errands If I see it again I'll have to cop it
Anonymous 17-07-24 00:47:11 No. 22487
>>22486 It was very short compared to his other work. Classic graeber with a particularized thesis and neat examples. It’s like a very thin slice of dawn of everything, where the thesis was “historically there were alternatives, and that’s where we get most our ideas”.
Anonymous 17-07-24 04:54:58 No. 22489
>>22459 同志，你回到这个串的话，那一定要告诉我你学了什么假设语气
Anonymous 26-07-24 22:49:43 No. 22631
a maybe dumb question that popped in my head and probably just shows i need to read moar theory was: how does direct democracy meet the special material needs of a minority (say for example people with down syndrome) when it represents only the interests of the majority?
Glownonymous 27-07-24 05:06:52 No. 22633
>>22631 I guess one way to help ensure these needs would be concerning the question of the introduction of bills, because that's a huge chokepoint like you can have everyone vote on everything all at 1 level, but who decides what to vote on? Petitions are the democratic means of this. A way to ensure that petitions aren't discriminatory over issues that impact a very small proportion of people would be to not implement signature minimums (or keep them small), but have a means of dissension, and have that be the gatekeeping factor (either some threshold of dissension is needed to bar the issue/bill being put forward, or some proportion of pro/signatures to con, or reasoned dissension, etc.). Ideally people who aren't involved shouldn't care to shut down something that has nothing to do with them, and will allow it through. Though it's probably best if petitions aren't directly writing law, but instead are for the creation of a committee to legislate or create an agency etc. to deal with an issue, and to deal with it generally in the direction laid out by the people. That'd b my schema.
Also I just wanna say, democracy starts outside of the political mechanism, in the organization of groups with mutual interest. In a condition of a responsive democracy, but not yet fully altered social and economic relations, historically oppressed groups need to be tightly organized [for the purpose of elaborating self-theory, promoting their agenda/needs, and for carrying out struggle to free themselves or having the organization and will in place to discipline the state somehow if their needs are not met] and see the struggle thru to the end. And if I got a choice, a new democracy I think ought to include within the political mechanism unique representation for historically oppressed groups, based on their organizations. Like some kind of veto power, or power to introduce legislation, or something else that does more than either leaving it up to their extra-state organizing or just over-representing them, e.g.
Actually is none of what I wrote abt a direct democracy? Whoopsie
Anonymous 31-07-24 15:58:56 No. 22646
Finished Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett (2013).trick ourselves into believing that we haven't changed the essence of the model and are revealing what is always there, merely hidden in the other configurations. So, again the potential fallacy here is the paradox of the heap.<Our minds don’t have a single magnificent summit, consciousness. Contrary to a tradition going back at least to Descartes in the seventeenth century, conscious phenomena are neither the most “central” nor the “highest” phenomena in our minds (Jackendoff, 1987; Dennett, 1991a). A seductive bad image needs a counter-image to neutralize it, so here is a simple imagination-adjuster to start us off: recall Cole Porter’s wonderful song “You’re the Top” and reflect that maybe you’re not the top—not the summit of the mountain, but the whole mountain, and what you know and can tell about the mountain that is you is not the view from the summit, but various views from halfway up. You might like to think of the phenomena of consciousness as rather like the fringe of hair around a bald man’s pate.
Anonymous 12-09-24 21:52:52 No. 22647
Finished
Utopia by Thomas More, in the 2012 Open Utopia version edited by Stephen Duncombe:
http://theopenutopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Open-Utopia-fifth-poofs-facing-amended.pdf http://theopenutopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/openutopia.epub_.zip If you want to read it yourself, my advice is to directly go to the story (book I & II). The footnotes will clarify anything for the modern reader. The "introduction" is like the worst Channel Awesome stuff: It goes through the entire thing, spoiling everything, has quite a size relative the thing it is supposed to just introduce, and gives an analysis that is made banal and redundant by the footnotes—which are great footnotes! Hail to the footnotes! Well done, Stephen.
Anonymous 13-09-24 05:12:05 No. 22648
Finished Thinking in Systems—A Primer 2008 book edited by Diana Wright, based on a draft by Donella H. Meadows, the lead author of The Limits to Growth . (Meadows died in 2001, but most of this work is from 1993.)delays . There you go.Trap : Rules to govern a system can lead to rule-beating—perverse behavior that gives the appearance of obeying the rules or achieving the goals, but that actually distorts the system.The Way Out : Design, or redesign, rules to release creativity not in the direction of beating the rules, but in the direction of achieving the purpose of the rules.
Anonymous 13-09-24 06:48:56 No. 22649
>>22648 I have been meaning to read this for a long time now, is it really that bad? Should I just remove it from my list of books to read?
Anonymous 13-09-24 07:11:01 No. 22650
>>22649 It's super basic. The content is: There are reinforcing feedback loops and stabilizing ones. Here are diagrams for stocks and flows of a thermostat and a bathtub. The end.
Anonymous 19-09-24 09:13:20 No. 22717
Finished The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin (1892, in the 1913 translation by Chapman and Hall). Quotable but overall unconvincing.more authoritarian one.only one way in which Communism can be established equitably, only one way which satisfies our instincts of justice and is at the same time practical (…) In a word, the system is this: no stint or limit to what the community possesses in abundance, but equal sharing and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or apt to run short.<…if this or that article of consumption runs short, and has to be doled out, to those who have most need most should be given. equal personal budgets , so people are in a sense equal and they are their own individual standard when it comes to what they need. Kropotkin wants no budgets and no prices, instead standards set by society for what counts as being needy regarding this or that. And I'm not against such standards, but I'm aware that no matter how democratic the standard-setting procedures are, this standardizing is more authoritarian than the individuals deciding with their personal budgets. Of course, it's possible to have both: The standards of need and using your personal budget as a fallback if you don't qualify for assistance in these eyes of society.<Take, for example, an association stipulating that each of its members should carry out the following contract: “We undertake to give you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work recognized as necessary to existence (…) if it does not please you, go and look for other conditions elsewhere in the wide world, or else seek adherents and organize with them on novel principles. We prefer our own.” <This is what could be done in a communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they became too numerous. society sets the standard of work hours . There will never be a perfect consensus on what the proper amount of hours should be just like there will never be a perfect consensus on what counts as need, convenience, or luxury. There is of course a relationship between how many hours humanity works and how much consumable stuff is produced. Why not allow individuals to decide their own work hours and face the consequence of having more or less stuff. (Is there much conflict between this idea and giving people the same consumption budgets? Well, we can think of more free time as something like a consumption item you obtain with your budget. And we can likewise think that way about more pleasant working conditions.)
Anonymous 20-09-24 23:39:53 No. 22742
all this chatgpt -tier garbage to say you didn't understand the marxist ltv or the marxist concept of communism as an extremely distant, post-scarcity stage. not an achievable program
Anonymous 21-09-24 01:10:37 No. 22744
>>22743
Anonymous 21-09-24 01:21:35 No. 22746
socially necessary labor is already the value of commodities under capitalism. planning would, at most, centralize the and optimize the responses (supply) to the changes in demand, a currently decentralized process by the market through prices on top of the underlying value of commodities
Anonymous 21-09-24 01:33:00 No. 22748
<In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished, after labor has become not only a livelihood but life's prime want, after the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly–only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois law be left behind in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Anonymous 21-09-24 01:34:29 No. 22749
mods should ban you, I have to make an effort to correct your mistakes, but you can simply disregard it and pump more ai-generated word salads, effectively suffocating any coherent discussion
Anonymous 21-09-24 02:04:10 No. 22752
>>22751 >my point >to me >the point made by engels
Anonymous 21-09-24 02:14:56 No. 22753
in fact, I can post multiple quotes where marx explicitly opposed the extremely vulgar and stupid idea of using snlt as prices (labor vouchers and such). if you had read capital (even just the first volume) he is just as explicit in that all societies necessarily have to adjust to supply and demand. feel free to post where marx proposed the snlt as prices nonsense you are claiming he did
Anonymous 21-09-24 03:06:59 No. 22755
>>22754 >what was un-marxist in my definitions? >get called out >by X I meant Y all along
Anonymous 21-09-24 03:17:54 No. 22757
the other points make the same basic mistakes>claim that marx said A >"disprove" A <be proven marx said B, not A >actually he said C
Anonymous 21-09-24 03:24:53 No. 22758
>>22756 >claim you are using marxist definitions <source? >I made it up you still haven't addressed
>>>/edu/22752 <? for example, when I point out that marx never said nor implied that the snlt should replace prices; the way to address it would be to post a quote where he either said either explicitly or reasonably and unambiguously hinted this. your entire idea of marxism comes from a (essentially meaningless) slogan, you are kind of projecting here and better yet, you write things like
>yeah, sure. such a cowardly answer. where you passive-aggressively admit you can't refute the point being made - if marx had made these claims and used these definitions you attribute him, you could just post that. just like you couldn't back up your claim that marx proposed a planned economy where snlt ordered production
of course, whenever pressed you keep the language vague enough so you as to not obstruct
>>>/edu/22757 Anonymous 21-09-24 03:31:42 No. 22759
if anything, marx hints that capitalism is "rational", as in, that it produces a rational allocation of resources, because prices are different from the snlt. the trpf doesn't have much to do with this
Anonymous 04-10-24 07:33:50 No. 22794
Marx and Le Capital —Finally a Marx book for redditors? No, it's a 2022 collection of essays about Kapital's French translation, the collection edited by Marcello Musto. It's endless hairsplitting.modern French appears twice. Three essays mention the French edition injecting the term "industrial ladder" into some sentence (I agree with the third of these saying it doesn't make a big difference). Six people are jacking off in their separate essays about what "aplatir" means. Marx promising the reader a "scientific value" of the French version independent of the original gets mentioned nine times.<A peculiar destiny presides over the creation of this book, for its translation into French is a true act of creation. <The author is an exile living amid the fogs of the Thames; the publisher is also an outlaw, who as if by a miracle escaped three gangs of killers sent to shoot him on the infernal day of 24 May!* The man who put us in touch with each other, your son-in-law, is also an outlaw, driven into exile by the winds of persecution and followed by your beloved daughter and the poor dear child, whose frail health causes you so many worries. <Born in the midst of suffering, your book will perhaps earn me much persecution; I willingly accept it.
Anonymous 09-10-24 12:18:24 No. 22814
Where can I find a more updated version of Capital volume I where things like labor theory of value has commentary on why its outdated and what parts of the theory are still useful?
Anonymous 13-10-24 06:55:16 No. 22821
Recently read Marlene Terwiliger's dissertation Jews and Italians and the Socialist Party, New York City, 1901-1917 : a study of class, ethnicity and class consciousness . Again, as with my brief reading of Foner and his cover of the German socialists, and the history of the Young Lords, I am reminded of the specific role the second-gen has to offer. Just as the student Bolsheviks were the secretaries for their Russian workers, the students of New York must be interpreters for their Venezuelan workers. I wish I could comment on anything less banal or obvious, but I'm nowhere near finished. If anything, pick apart how I'm retarded until I get back.
Anonymous 26-10-24 22:07:59 No. 22865
Reading some strongly worded advice against thinking in thin smooth lines in The Stock Market and Finance from a Physicist's Viewpoint by M. F. M. Osborne (1977).
Anonymous 01-11-24 00:34:40 No. 22869
https://www.youtube.com/live/bot9fghiIAk A rare appearance of Gerald "Class Only" Horne.
Anonymous 01-11-24 17:24:22 No. 22871
Just read thirty to forty pages of Capitalist Realism by Fisher.
Anonymous 05-11-24 10:43:03 No. 22880
>>22814 Just read it and take it "as is". It's not "out dated" per se, you want to get the beginning of the conversation (it's not the beginning, beginning, but you get what I mean). Then, if you want an up to date version, you can read on " real competition ". The best book would be " capitalism competition and crisis " which have a corresponding lecture for free on YouTube.
Anonymous 07-11-24 11:37:03 No. 22884
>>22814 There was a modernised text that /edu/ used to have .pdf of before the great server crash.
Link unrelated
https://johnhawks.net/weblog/four-stone-age-sites-with-ancient-wooden-artifacts/ Anonymous 09-11-24 09:51:58 No. 22890
<There is an obvious contradiction between centralism, an essential element of socialist planning, and self-management, also essential to socialism, since the more power the center wields the less is left for workers in the enterprises. But this contradiction can be managed and even become a positive factor if certain conditions are present: objective circumstances must allow for a significant limitation of central control, and the economy must be able to provide workers with economic security and a decent standard of living. Without the first, self-management is not meaningful; without the second, workers cannot be expected to sacrifice local group interests for the general good. Both conditions were absent in Russia. Our to Master and to Own (2011) by Immanuel Ness & Dario Azzellini (eds.), a massive tome about attempts at workers' control from the 19th century to the 21st.of my life I am barely capable of giving a summary. Do you have deep knowledge about Algeria, Indonesia, and Chile? Do you also have experience living in Germany before World War II? Then you might be in a position to write a proper review of this. Otherwise, stick to reviewing a chapter about something you know well.
Anonymous 20-11-24 15:25:27 No. 22954
Finished my piece on Babeuf (French Revolutionary, proto-Communist) for my serialized book on the Proletarian Revolution:
https://devetsil.substack.com/p/political-emergence-of-babouvism-33e?r=1vkaa7 (every section will be free to read of course…I hope it inspires other comrades to research and write about what they're interested in and share it with the world).
Currently, I am working on the section dedicated to Blanqui. Afterwards, will be the section on Proudhon. Finally, Section 2 is dedicated specifically to Marx where I will be analyzing (1) Marx's concept of the revolution, (2) Marx's critique of civil society and the political state, (3) Marx's doctrine of the commune, and finally (4) Marx's problem of the proletarian party.
Babeuf and Blanqui (I want to eventually translate his untranslated book Capital et Travail) are relatively interesting revolutionaries despite being forgotten and invariably acknowledged via fragments by Marx and Lenin. I am not keen on Proudhon but I think it is critical to examine Proudhon's doctrine of the proletarian revolution to end Section 1 to show why the First International went toward Marx in lieu of Proudhon.
Soboul, Albert. A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789-1799. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, p. 141.
Anonymous 21-11-24 15:56:51 No. 22959
Reading Continental Reckoning by Eliott West. IT is a very interesting book, also Karl Marx is a racist fuck who was jealous that he never made it to the Unites States in time to become enriched. So Marx wrote an incel manifesto instead of going to the gym, saving up some money and moving to the United States to play in one of the greatest game fields ever conceived by man.
Also, 80% of people who made it to California did so by boat either through Panama or Cape horn, the great Oregon Trail wagon crossing to California is largely over represented.
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496233585/continental-reckoning/ Anonymous 22-11-24 16:16:30 No. 22967
I want to understand why continental philosophy is so popular among left leaning people, why analytical philosopher is so look down up by lefties? Explain to me, bros.
Anonymous 22-11-24 21:17:26 No. 22972
Zizek probably won.
Anonymous 22-11-24 22:21:11 No. 22973
Finished Erewhon by Samuel Butler (1872).before birth , and so babies are seen as people of defective character who choose to be born.
Anonymous 27-11-24 10:55:19 No. 23003
>>22998 Yes and I need to start a thread on Samir Amin
Anonymous 27-11-24 11:09:14 No. 23004
I'm reading 'Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers' by S. E. Frost (and Das Kapital too but everyone reads that at some point). I need to brush up on pre-Marxist philosophical canon. I don't have time to read Hegel or Feuerbach, though.
Anonymous 03-12-24 21:44:12 No. 23042
Comrades.
Anonymous 05-12-24 01:39:09 No. 23045
I've been reading chinese web novels non stop for over 4 months now. Started getting into jp web novels but its all harem or ntr revenge where the mc is a doormat so its hard to find decent stuff amongst the trash. As for actual educational stuff I got some books from foreign language press.
Anonymous 09-12-24 15:49:30 No. 23138
What some good, MODERN, 1900s - today, LEFTIST BOOKS that one should read?
Anonymous 10-12-24 15:15:15 No. 23148
I'm reading Minima Moralia of Adorno, I'm getting a hard time understanding what he writes, it's just me or people have difficulties too? I'm getting filtered.
Anonymous 12-12-24 12:04:14 No. 23162
what can I read to learn the life of lenin with as much historical context as possible?
Anonymous 15-12-24 08:46:17 No. 23172
Finished The Politics of Democratic Socialism—An Essay on Social Policy by Evan Frank Mottram Durbin (1940). After an enthusiastic start a feeling sets in that this "essay" (normal people would call that a book) is ten times longer than it needs to be, and you start to see notes that are often little essays in themselves.not firm on what Marxism even is : He claims Marxism to be dramatically gloomy and contrasts that with an optimism of the classics. What about rampant Malthusianism among the classics? And why would the end of capitalism be gloomy to you? He claims Marxists to confuse relative and absolute misery, despite Marx explicitly making the distinction.hollow empiricism part of his critique: The material, economic explanation of history is something he equates with selfish motives of individuals . He makes a lot of what's in your mind, but how much empiricism can you do without observers outside your head; and he talks much about subconscious processes at that, so not even self-observation will do. I am not even totally hostile to his position critical of the fundamentalists. He is right that England has gone through a lot of reforms, capitalism has shown itself to be more flexible than anticipated, but this subconscious psychobabble stuff is useless. We can speculate all day about these processes and unknown real motives being this or that. He talks about the importance of a good childhood for the psyche, but then doesn't look into the childhood of any socialist agitator.broken logic part of his critique: He claims logically economics is either the one fundamental cause of everything in history or one of many equally important ones; and since it isn't the former, it must be the latter. He claims Marxists either claim the former or a mysterious and logically impossible third option. But of course a third option exists, that of the factors having different weight. He even briefly mentions that and then drops it and plays confused. How can something be fundamental, but only in the long run , he asks, that must be nonsense… Look man, after filling my tank I am not much constrained in where I drive, but as the tank gets close to running out I am drawn again to where the gas stations are located. A big stock of surplus allows us to do all sorts of silly things, but as the stock depletes economic constraints make themselves felt more and more.big fan of the horseshoe model , equating Nazis and socialists. Actually, his position is all over the place, he oscillates between equating them and saying the Nazis are far worse. And in the end, he admits his belief that British socialists are not at all prone to violence like the Bolsheviks (which didn't stop him from slandering socialists in general with his ramblings about those evil thoughts and feelings you don't even know you have, but he somehow just "knows" you have them). What to do if the authoritarian socialists become a dangerous threat though? He muses that maybe the parties he considers totalitarian should be banned if they got around 40 % electoral support or… maybe earlier? Again he is oscillating wildly about what the proper evidence of a threat would be, swinging from observable violent acts to kafkaesque subconscious guilt. Maybe he will consult your star sign, too.fruits of democracy he says, meaning this openness for the tree making these fruits, by which he means the democratic individual psyche. No freedom of speech nor assembly for the totalitarians! The fruits don't make the tree, he says. But won't experiencing tolerance make you tolerant? Come to think of it, trees come from seeds, so even the fruity metaphor that he likes so much disagrees with him. Fruit and tree is like egg and chicken. There is mutual interaction.
Anonymous 20-12-24 07:00:46 No. 23205
Going through little bits of advice alleged to be by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus , ordered in a way that seems to me completely arbitrary. One may see these bits as key insights for becoming calm and rational or as a how-to guide for thinking of yourself as a badass while acting in the most servile way imaginable.
Anonymous 21-12-24 01:12:10 No. 23221
Going through my reactionary studies again, this time with Huerta de Soto's Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles . I didn't have any desire to study the ancap canon further after seeing Gene Callahan's blatant strawmen within the first 20 pages of his book, so it was refreshing to see his acknowledgement of how, no, Marx wasn't ignorant of "marginal utility" or "supply and demand" or any of that, before he switches the topic to technique reswitching. It always loops back to that, doesn't it:>Dennis: Sure, the Soviet Revolution pushed the nation forward, b-but our engineers!!! >de Soto: Sure, Marx wasn't muh mudpie theorist, b-but credit and interest!
Anonymous 21-12-24 03:15:26 No. 23224
>>23221 Well, perhaps that's a false equivalence. Soto's not as blatantly
dishonest as fascists are on this one, I could see why someone sees interest in that way.
Anonymous 27-12-24 23:27:47 No. 23284
Cracking open Yockey's Imperium , and after finishing the first chapter I'm shocked by the fact I feel so unchallenged; I could accept Yockey's positions on Destiny and Fate, on his idea of a cultural soul that reflects on itself and material reality, and none of it seems, on its surface at least, incompatible with Marx or his materialism. If a organism follows his own internal destiny and faces with the facts of his world due to that, what is the meaningful difference between that and men making their own history, but not as they please?
Anonymous 29-12-24 01:09:03 No. 23304
Any recs on bureaucracy other than David Graeber’s book? Looking for nonfiction, so no dfw or Kafka. The internet and digital paperwork has only multiplied the mundane authority previously held by the irs or other similar institutions through binary rejection/acceptance. These minor inconveniences add up to a constant aura of oppression. People paid 40k a year to review digital paperwork. Online forms promulgated by scanned copies of commissioners orders. Cell phones, landlines, emails, in person and the constant battle of how to contact whom. Clerks rejecting petitions and motions thinking they’re the judge. Old men paying people 40k a year just to file their paperwork for them. 100 emails a day. 5 zoom meetings interrupted by phone calls and knocks on the office door. All these micro inconveniences add up to be the modern gates of the law, and through the law to capital. I’m drowning every day in this shit and I feel like there’s something there. I feel the dialectic coursing through me, but it hasn’t made itself visible. Help me comrades.
Anonymous 31-12-24 14:15:00 No. 23318
>>23316 Could you give some examples of that phenomenon of class society collapsing without another exploiting class to take the reigns?
That sounds pretty interesting
Anonymous 06-01-25 09:03:35 No. 23364
I'm reading "to kill a nation" by parenti. I can't read more than a page without filling with absolute rage. Americans deserve to be shamed and shunned. Military members should be spat on. Absolutely fucking disgusting.
Glownonymous 11-01-25 03:59:11 No. 23401
>>23172 On Education, N. K. Krupskaya, published by foreign language press has unique stuff abt his early life. On marxists.org you can find another biography of Lenin from Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin or Memories of Lenin. Bobrovskaya wrote a small biography on him. For historical context maybe just read histories and compare dates. I've only read Bobrovskaya's biography and A Prophet Armed for context on the russian communist movement. I know Stalin wrote on this too so I'd check him out next if I wanted to read more abt that.
>>23138 The Shock Doctrine
Anonymous 16-01-25 06:09:44 No. 23428
Been reading some essays by Thomas Paine.<There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
Anonymous 18-01-25 20:32:12 No. 23436
Finished Mathematica by David Bessis. It's a math book with basically no math in it, a book about doing math. In general. We don't solve any concrete problems here. Very easy reading. Math papers are not easy to follow, even for top mathematicians, and the papers are usually structured very differently from how the results were actually found, which got a lot to do with intuition and many false starts. What makes somebody good at math? Bessies emphasizes practice and a certain attitude over inborn talent. What about your talent of intuition though? - You improve your intuition through practice. He says his advice is similar to that of Descartes, Grothendieck, and Bill Thurston. So he talks a bit about them and also his own life. He makes a big deal of doodling and visualizing exercises. For example: When outside, you look at some spot and try to picture what does the spot you are at right now look like from over there.
Anonymous 22-01-25 04:08:34 No. 23444
Finished News from Nowhere by William Morris, a supposed classic of utopian literature. I went into this with expectations adjusted to the genre, meaning little tension and lots of lecturing, but this one is exceptionally dull. So the guy visits the world more than a century into the future (starting from 1890) and travels by horse carriage. Technology regressed, so no trains for you, and it's anarcho-communism time.<But my father used to know some of them when they were young; and he said that they were as little like young women as might be: they had hands like bunches of skewers, and wretched little arms like sticks; and waists like hourglasses, and thin lips and peaked noses and pale cheeks; and they were always pretending to be offended at anything you said or did to them. No wonder they bore ugly children, for no one except men like them could be in love with them—poor things!
Anonymous 24-01-25 02:19:59 No. 23449
Just finished reading J. Sakai's The Shock of Recognition, a short text about fascism. Thought it gets fascism mostly right, with the exception of buying its revolutionary rhetoric as fact instead of just rhetoric. In fact it's the most reactionary ideology possible, creating colonial slavery from ground zero.
I don't know how much the part where the author says the big bourgeoisie had no say at all in Nazi Germany is true, which inspired me to read Tooze's Wages of Destruction later.
Understanding Islamic traditionalism as a form of fascism makes this book really good in the sense that it accurately tracks the universal petty bourgeois nature of fascist ideology.
https://trueleappress.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/kersplebedeb-com-the-shock-of-recognition-j-sakai.pdf Anonymous 31-01-25 17:59:06 No. 23495
<Bears have sharper eyesight than people (with night vision to boot), ears that are twice as sensitive, and noses capable of scenting a carcass twenty miles distant (seven times better than a bloodhound). A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling (2020). It's about what the title says. Except there are several libertarians. And several bears. A bunch of "anarcho-capitalits" decide to settle in Grafton and run things in a spontaneous and individualistic way. Some decide spontaneously to feed the bears, feeding them so much sugary crap they stop hibernating. Others are like WTF is the deal with all those bears coming here and spontaneously decide to shoot them…
Anonymous 02-02-25 14:15:31 No. 23502
I have been wondering why people so often commit the sunk-cost fallacy. Maybe there is an actual advantage to continue for a bit when one already feels that one is wrong, so as to better grasp what the effects of the mistake are like, expecting useful information for facing similar situations? Early examples of economists reasoning with utility diagrams show the marginal utility line entering negative territory. The standard today is to either stop drawing the line at zero marginal utility because why would a reasonable person inflict self-damage (or worse they make the weird stipulation that any increase in consumption always brings additional positive utility, however small).Discourse on Method by Descartes. He says some situations are like trying to get out of a forest with little to no information on what the best route is. His advice: Some straight lines are better than others, but any straight line leads out of the forest. So commit.
Anonymous 03-02-25 01:12:21 No. 23505
Hello /edu/! I feel like I should read actual theory and not get my information largely from Wikipedia articles. Where is the best place to start? Personally I'm interested in all politics from fascism to anarchism and communism though as you might have guessed I'm more of a leftist.
Anonymous 03-02-25 03:03:23 No. 23506
Is there a good video about how and why China is beginning to dominate economically? Ideally with a focus on government policy. Doesn't -have- to be a Marxist perspective just not "China will collapse in 2 weeks" tier.
Anonymous 04-02-25 19:13:21 No. 23509
>>23508
n 05-02-25 14:42:53 No. 23512
hi anons. still reading through wage labor and capital, what should be my next read?
Anonymous 05-02-25 14:56:05 No. 23514
That's Volume 0 of Capital so your next book in your study plans should probably be Capital volume 1.
Glownonymous 07-02-25 04:56:38 No. 23522
Explain Permanent Revolution to me. It just seems like (properly) internationalist Stalinism.
Anonymous 07-02-25 05:25:02 No. 23523
>>23522 >internationalist Stalinism This is an oxymoron
Glownonymous 07-02-25 06:12:18 No. 23524
What are some books to read to differentiate the NEP from Dengism?
Anonymous 08-02-25 01:01:49 No. 23533
I really been thinking about our biological evolved feeling of "personal property"… it's crazy how monkeys with brains create entire economic and political systems to justify their gut instincts.
Anonymous 09-02-25 07:42:17 No. 23546
>>23519 >i similarly enjoy talking vulgarly with people, but in a way that parodies (or defaces) the pretension of sexuality, by overidentification. it is a reverse phallus, which then allows for my own castration, and so liberates me to my femininity. in this, i find greatest enjoyment flirting with women, yet never soiling this phantasmatic friendship with sex. this bears similarity to lacan's equation of enjoyment in the drive; "i could be talking or fucking and it would be the same difference". here, i prefer the social masturbations of oral excesses. yet, oral sex digusts me; giving or receiving.
Glownonymous 11-02-25 10:35:47 No. 23578
>>23577 >all romance is an infantile fantasy
Glownonymous 11-02-25 11:41:05 No. 23580
>>23579 >i am criticising *all* systems from the root of human desire >can you expand on what you mean here?
Glownonymous 11-02-25 12:07:39 No. 23582
>>23581
Glownonymous 11-02-25 12:45:10 No. 23584
>>23583 >if man is limitless, then why not grow wings? >society is a groundless "choice" >they do not disappear, but remain
Glownonymous 11-02-25 13:21:16 No. 23586
>>23585 >if you treat criticism as unconditional, then wouldnt you have the imperative to demolish communist society as soon as it was established?
Glownonymous 11-02-25 14:09:53 No. 23588
>>23587 >if we achieved a post-oedipal society, what would eros look like, for example?
Glownonymous 11-02-25 14:57:14 No. 23590
>>23589 >who and what is able to be "liberated"? >we eroticise what we cannot possess >thus, eros must be sublimated by its alienation for us to truly "liberate" it via indirect social expression.
Glownonymous 11-02-25 15:38:31 No. 23592
>>23591 >well to me, heterosexual identity obscures a homoerotic (bisexual) essence >you are just a foolish essentialist who thinks sex isnt social, but is mechanical >the foot fetish for example on the face of it seems more religious than sexual
Glownonymous 11-02-25 16:24:36 No. 23594
>>23593 >well, truth be told, my deepest point is that without heterosexuality >but negation can only mean mediation. >if you could paint over class society with idpol, the bourgeoisie would have done it by now. >sex being a form of religious ritual
Glownonymous 11-02-25 17:01:44 No. 23596
>>23595 >is patriarchy a form of class society, or is class society just a form of patriarchy? >since phallus emerges naturally from the genital relation >how do you mean?
Glownonymous 11-02-25 17:26:21 No. 23598
>>23597 >humans lived under matriarchies, but they werent any more peaceful >i embrace contradiction
Glownonymous 11-02-25 18:08:15 No. 23600
>>23599 >imagining that you can have the perfect orgasm, or taste the perfect food >we must be mature and realise that all things must be mediated >it'll be your balls being cut off first.
Glownonymous 11-02-25 19:17:04 No. 23602
>>23601 >a new mode of production is advancing doesnt mean the entire world has caught up >weltgeist >i can go deeper into the qabalism
Glownonymous 11-02-25 20:17:24 No. 23604
>>23603 >primitive modes of exchange like gifting are still in use >therefore the mind is a closed system Flood detected; Post discarded. ajab
Glownonymous 11-02-25 21:08:57 No. 23606
>>23605 >capitalism literally cannot afford to proletarianise the world >so basically, you think we have too many words? >the mind is always mediated
Glownonymous 11-02-25 21:55:58 No. 23608
>>23607 >the crisis of capital is coming to a head thus, where it will either offer UBI or it will crumble (it is already crumbling after all). >monetisation =/= value-creating >for us to conceive a thought, it must be expressed in some concrete form
Glownonymous 12-02-25 22:27:37 No. 23618
>>23617 >i consider capitalism to primarily be a mode of distribution >the reserve army of labour then (as a surplus proletariat) have proven to be the revolutionary subject >re-distribution is the key transition from capitalism into socialism >well i was using a marxist concept of value. >well all languages are self-limiting
Anonymous 19-02-25 17:40:37 No. 23667
>>23575
Anonymous 19-02-25 17:50:36 No. 23668
>>21669 Wdym? It is modern. Especially since it was written after World War Two
Anonymous 19-02-25 19:40:54 No. 23671
>>21004 >>21155 Vast majority of classic works are this.
And especially for works that existed before the printing press, who knows what the original story was?
Theyve been subject to revision so many times.
Anonymous 20-02-25 11:37:03 No. 23674
I'm going to read some real shithead fascist theory to look what basis they build upon. Julius Evola comes to mind and mein Kampf ofc. Any recommendations? I'm not looking to rread from front to back, just enough to get the gist of it.
Anonymous 20-02-25 21:55:09 No. 23675
>>23672
Anonymous 20-02-25 22:02:17 No. 23676
>>23581
Anonymous 20-02-25 22:06:05 No. 23677
>>23577 >>23576 >>23575 Idk why people like to pathologise male psychosexuality based on their social relations with their mothers.
People always wanna complain about "mommas boys" or just mother-son relations in general.
Boys are not allowed to be loved without being pathologised by society as being spoiled/enabled.
Yet nobody complains about daddy's girls.
Girls are given lots of affection from mom and dad without philosophical harassment.
Why is that?
Anonymous 20-02-25 22:27:18 No. 23678
>>23577 > this is why the alienating object of the father is part of positive development, since it allows us to come apart from the mother (by unconsciously revealing her sin; lest we become catholics, worshipping the "virgin mother")
Anonymous 20-02-25 22:29:12 No. 23679
>>23672 > most men never forget their first love (while women do). the case of oedipal attachment is clear - thats why
Anonymous 21-02-25 00:29:14 No. 23680
>>23598 >>23596 >>23594 What about the Electra complex
Anonymous 21-02-25 00:37:35 No. 23681
>>20931 That's an insult to pigeons
Anonymous 21-02-25 01:51:55 No. 23683
So with Chinas recent crackdown on gajillionaires and the apparent collapse of the usa, i am forced to reconcile with the the fact Deng may have been onto something. Are there any reading resources that might explain how in the world the economic planners didnt get replaced by capitalist stooges?
Anonymous 21-02-25 05:20:56 No. 23690
>>23689 >the feminist truth ofc is that women dont owe men anything.
Anonymous 21-02-25 10:12:21 No. 23697
>>23696
Anonymous 22-02-25 20:06:06 No. 23708
>>23697 midwit in every sense of the word.
I remember when I thought like you.
Keep reading.
Anonymous 01-03-25 04:03:22 No. 23753
>>23744 Good argument. Useful insights.
>this is also why populism is inherently right-wing, since it seeks to abandon universality for an exclusive generality It falters here; The Communist counter argument is that real universality is in the objective condition of the Proletariat.
Also polite hint over at →
>>23752 Anonymous 01-03-25 05:02:53 No. 23757
>>23756
Anonymous 15-03-25 17:38:01 No. 23915
I have a secret pleasure with bodybuilding history. Despite being a Randian, egoist goober with some very questionable theories on gym routines, Mentzer was showing some interesting focus on critiquing the ideology surrounding gym culture. As far as I know, he is the only man to have critiqued the social aspect of the gym in any serious way. Everyone else defends it.>he's a meth addict >he's a sore loser >he's a grifter selling tapes >he's a liar >he's a cuck >he's a homosexual (not beating the fascist accusations with this one)
Anonymous 23-03-25 06:51:38 No. 24033
On Chapter 3 of Capital: New Translation
Anonymous 29-03-25 03:31:32 No. 24069
Hi anons, I was thinking if the classic Marxist concept of alienation has any echo on the post modern "narrative" , has any post modern thinker written about alienation?
Anonymous 06-04-25 05:07:43 No. 24105
>>23585 >No.23586 You know, you are a fascist, yes? So, have you read Evola? Not the version that is conventionally available, but the translations of his more serious Italian work. His dialogue against other fascists. He called himself a super fascist not as a meme, but precisely because he sought to transcend natural laws themselves, and therefore, to go even farther in the original rejection of essentialism (a rejection which was actually argued for by the fascists… in the beginning, at least!). He seriously made the case that the laws of nature are subject to change in the penetrative, transcended sense, rather than being caught in a cycle of permutated expressions. Not just with magical idealism, but in direct polemics, see for example here, if you can understand without the broader context:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160313135448/https://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7396 I had to use the wayback machine to find this, that's how obscure it is. The primary website is down, as far as I can tell. Here's part 2 and part 3, respectively:
https://juliusevola.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/32-giovanni-gentile-part-21.pdf https://juliusevola.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/33-giovanni-gentile-part-31.pdf Anonymous 07-04-25 00:44:47 No. 24112
Finished Economic Science Fictions by various authors (ed. William Davies, 2018), a bunch of essays looking at science fiction through the lens of economics and the other way around.<Land is valued due to the continuous demand for mineral and water resources, meaning that even today mining is the physical action analogous to extraction, as mining punctuates the differing logics of accumulation throughout historical time. Therefore, in terms of the global struggle around labour, mining remains fundamental as a site of exploitation and class consciousness; but it also symbolises a meeting point between the natural and the technological. The film Moon (2009) by Duncan Jones explores the future of mining, now taking place on the Moon. analogous to extraction. Bet you thought it was extraction, you stupid pleb. Or maybe you said to yourself: "Hmm mining being analogous, hmmmmmm hmm it used to be that way, but… even today??" Mining is also symbolizing something. Imagine what it feels like to have your esteemed logics of accumulation punctuated by mining, I hate that! Very profound that bit, ahem, think about that. Now try reciting above passage into a camera with a straight face.
Anonymous 18-04-25 12:27:05 No. 24160
I have been thinking a bit about the software industry, and whether or not software even counts as a commodity, as it replication is practically cost less. It has an obvious use-value, but I don't get what its exchange value would be. Therefore I question how would someone make money, in a hypotechical ethical manner would work. Would it be donations, with a bar showing the needed money per year be the play, with a drop of the project after shown lack of interest, be the play?
Anonymous 21-04-25 10:32:26 No. 24177
>>24160 Consider Marx's
Fragment on Machines Video unrelated
Anonymous 21-04-25 23:22:49 No. 24184
Finished listening to Presumed Guilty. Chemerensky is one of the forefront constitutional scholars of our age and no one in power ever listens to him. His conclusions are lib “they could pass laws” but his analysis of the historical ramifications of Supreme Court jurisprudence on criminal law is pristine and depressing as hell. Every right set out in the constitution has been gutted to hell and back since the Warren court, which itself was milquetoast at best. After all, they still decided terry.
Anonymous 23-04-25 01:21:41 No. 24189
>>24184 Finished death of a salesman. I bet it’s better live.
Anonymous 03-05-25 03:35:56 No. 24223
Drunkenly reading the house of usher to my girlfriend. I fucking hate em dashes.
Anonymous 03-05-25 14:18:45 No. 24224
Something I want to research was how Engels dealt with his factories and his employees.
Anonymous 19-05-25 21:07:52 No. 24358
Back on the obsidian horse. Got all my lists of books I’ve read in one place. All my research notes. My fiction writing. My journaling. Anyone else using obsidian for a zettlekastin or at least a dumping ground so the brain knows it’s all in one place? I still have lots of folders of old notes from school and continuing educational material I want to put into my system. Would be cool to have an accountability buddy.
Anonymous 09-06-25 03:58:10 No. 24459
Finished History of Economic Management in North Korea by Phillip H. Park (2025). This takes the novel approach of not trusting defectors and foreign "experts" and instead relies almost entirely on official documents, read through a skeptical lens.
Anonymous 14-06-25 20:03:38 No. 24479
I forgot who Jordan Peterson was for a second. I had him mixed up with Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker
Anonymous 16-06-25 07:40:09 No. 24486
Where should I begin and what works should I read if I don't want to go too far down the theory rabbit hole?
Anonymous 20-06-25 00:07:34 No. 24504
>>19860 today i am researching the impact of open access policy on environmental research accessibility for my final paper.
It seems to be a bit of an elusive topic unfortunately…
Anonymous 24-06-25 23:51:11 No. 24512
So I was looking for a way to improve my rhetorical skills in English. (I don't even live in an English-speaking country, but you never know… maybe there will be a career opportunity in another country, maybeeee even a… romantic opportunity?) And while taking a break from search, I somehow stumbled upon a text shilling for a book supposedly full of interesting expressions, demonstrating it with this bit:<For example in the morning following a late night when he was a teenager his father would say: "Your eyes look like two piss-holes in the snow." Rosen's Almanac by Michael Rosen (2024) has entries for each day of the year, but, aside from etymology regarding certain dates, it can get pretty random, going from general English to national variants to regional slang to family in-jokes, and back, and again, and in leaps, though most often looking at the micro-slang end of the scale. Some entries are a couple pages long, musing and noticing things like kids today using "so" so much; but most entries are tweet-size, a lot of these being literal tweets Rosen liked. And I paid money for this! And so now you know how to write a book if you ever got famous.
Anonymous 27-06-25 22:56:34 No. 24519
>>24512 Michael Rosen was the author who did monologue stories that YouTube Poop artists satirized.
Anonymous 29-06-25 02:44:29 No. 24529
eh schniff
Anonymous 07-07-25 18:11:20 No. 24614
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
Anonymous 07-07-25 18:14:20 No. 24615
>>24614 What's insane about it? (Length aside.)
Anonymous 07-07-25 18:31:33 No. 24616
>>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
Anonymous 08-07-25 17:59:26 No. 24617
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. The Balls to Be a Woman: Golda Meir’s War against Toxic Masculinity .<SEXUAL REPRESSION LEVEL: Offers free foot rubs to IDF soldiers
Anonymous 09-07-25 12:53:12 No. 24618
i js thought of a hypothetical kweer kommunist klub for some reason
Anonymous 09-07-25 21:08:37 No. 24619
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.
Anonymous 09-07-25 21:13:16 No. 24620
>>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
Anonymous 10-07-25 17:57:07 No. 24622
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).
Anonymous 12-07-25 04:40:17 No. 24631
>>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.
Anonymous 12-07-25 04:55:41 No. 24632
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*
Anonymous 12-07-25 06:21:02 No. 24633
>>24632 Did you tell your wife’s boyfriend about how great the book is?
Gaylord
Anonymous 12-07-25 17:52:05 No. 24634
>>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.
Anonymous 15-07-25 19:59:10 No. 24653
>>22717 The leftypol twitter account (leftypol_org) Is now shilling for this incoherent book with a pinned tweet.
Anonymous 21-07-25 07:58:54 No. 24721
Slowly making my way through De Leon's works on the marxist internet library thing. I think I really like De Leon's ideas!
Anonymous 23-07-25 08:36:37 No. 24726
i’m wondering if he likes me
Anonymous 09-08-25 03:32:30 No. 24771
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/ Anonymous 09-08-25 22:09:18 No. 24779
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.
Anonymous 11-08-25 14:15:03 No. 24794
>>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)
Anonymous 12-08-25 03:36:47 No. 24796
>>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.)
Anonymous 12-08-25 10:51:20 No. 24799
>>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?
Anonymous 12-08-25 14:33:14 No. 24800
>>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.
Anonymous 12-08-25 14:34:44 No. 24801
>>24800 >sagepost >no counter-argument just stay out of things you dont understand.
Anonymous 12-08-25 18:41:57 No. 24802
>>24801 You want to have an argument about you fabricating quotes?
Anonymous 12-08-25 20:46:36 No. 24803
>>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…
Anonymous 12-08-25 20:54:31 No. 24804
>>24803 Now do that for
all quotes.
Anonymous 12-08-25 20:55:36 No. 24805
>>24804 which quotes have i not provided sources for?
Anonymous 12-08-25 21:04:39 No. 24806
>>24805 Are you schizophrenic? Do you not know what a quote is?
Anonymous 12-08-25 21:25:42 No. 24808
>>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 Anonymous 12-08-25 21:46:28 No. 24809
>>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?
Anonymous 13-08-25 06:13:22 No. 24810
wtf is praxis
Anonymous 13-08-25 06:21:53 No. 24811
>>24810 Unity of theory and practice
Anonymous 13-08-25 09:31:45 No. 24812
>>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.
Anonymous 14-08-25 01:42:29 No. 24819
>>24812 Is this your post:
>>24799 ? Four times you seemingly quote with green text from links. Are these actual quotes?
Anonymous 14-08-25 07:34:33 No. 24822
>>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?)
Anonymous 16-08-25 16:48:54 No. 24824
>>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.
Anonymous 16-08-25 19:28:38 No. 24825
>>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?
Anonymous 16-08-25 20:40:23 No. 24826
>>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.
Anonymous 17-08-25 08:02:15 No. 24827
>>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.
Anonymous 17-08-25 14:33:43 No. 24830
>>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.)
Anonymous 17-08-25 14:37:21 No. 24831
>>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.
Anonymous 18-08-25 04:22:50 No. 24839
>>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?
Anonymous 18-08-25 08:09:02 No. 24840
>>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.
Anonymous 19-08-25 02:42:17 No. 24841
>>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.
Anonymous 19-08-25 08:26:34 No. 24843
>>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?
Anonymous 19-08-25 17:15:49 No. 24854
>>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?
bloodgasm 19-08-25 17:36:40 No. 24858
>>19860 >Wat think Having an OP image be of two retards debating shit they both know nothing about sets a terrible standard for the board as a whole
>Wat reading Red Papers 7
Anonymous 20-08-25 04:36:15 No. 24868
>>24843 >debt makes no sense unless it is socially transferable Nonsense.
>which means it applies to any number of objects of trade Nonsense ×2.
>>24854 Do you have a specific question?
Anonymous 20-08-25 07:45:56 No. 24869
>>24868 a debt is a quantity; yes or no?
so then, how is this quantity measured?
Anonymous 21-08-25 07:16:04 No. 24874
>>24870 again, this is presupposing the direct reciprocity of barter exchange, which is an inadequate understanding of what debt as a social phenomenon constitutes. the question concerns debt generally, not specifically. so then, you can measure (A) with (A), but once you measure (A) with (B), you establish (C) to measure both - (C) being money.
Anonymous 22-08-25 02:15:03 No. 24882
>>24874 Why do you believe that recording "Bob owes Carl 2 watermelons" presupposes money (since you need money to count watermelons!) or barter exchange or direct reprossipissity or whatever the fuck. Why can't you keep your capitalist hallucinations to yourself?
Anonymous 22-08-25 08:11:29 No. 24884
>>24882 as soon as (X) is equated with (Y), both have their reference in (Z) as a common measure. that is the basic syllogism of value. outside of this, there is no value, since what can traded is either a portion of the same thing (which doesnt denote value, since value is related as the quantity of another good - such as is written in the iliad, that bronze and gold both share their value relative quantities of oxen), or a disproportion of different things (which isnt a value-relation, since there is no equality). the equation between things requires a "third thing" (as marx writes), to give them equality in a common substance. this to graeber is debt, generally.
>Why can't you keep your capitalist hallucinations to yourself? its actually the austrian school of economics who believes that all trade is an unequal form of barter, so perhaps you would fit in more with them.
Anonymous 22-08-25 08:20:17 No. 24885
>>24884 >as soon as (X) is equated with (Y) And where is that stated or even implied? Do you actually read the links or do you converse with an LLM to tell you what they are about?
Anonymous 22-08-25 08:39:00 No. 24886
>>24885 >And where is that stated or even implied? in the very concept of debt. debt is a quantity, and so can be equated between things by a common unit. the function of money is to generalise debt for this reason. to speak of interpersonal obligations is not the same as debt, which is a monetary phenomenon. at the advent of money, we have equation between commodities, since value is an expression of money. if i owe someone a favour, it doesnt become debt until it is transformed into a fixed quantity, at which point, it becomes transferable.
Anonymous 23-08-25 01:07:52 No. 24890
>>24882 >Why do you believe that recording "Bob owes Carl 2 watermelons" presupposes money >>24884 >as soon as (X) is equated with (Y), both have their reference in (Z) as a common measure. >>24885 >And where is that stated or even implied? >>24886 >in the very concept of debt. debt is a quantity, and so can be equated between things by a common unit. Can you prove this with the example "Bob owes Carl 2 watermelons"?
Anonymous 23-08-25 08:16:27 No. 24891
>>24890 to owe 2 watermelons is either to have borrowed 2 watermelons, to have borrowed 1 watermelon, with added interest, or to have borrowed something in equivalence with 2 watermelons. yet as it can be communicated by carl menger, it makes no sense to trade something of equal use-value (especially where one will be at a deficit); the other option is that it is given as a gift, but in this case, there is no debt implied, but only symbolic reciprocity.
it is necessarily the case then, that what is owed must be different than what has been borrowed, and so (X) is measured by (Y). this is done by pure deduction, in the case of the sentence "bob owes 2 watermelons".
Anonymous 23-08-25 17:55:09 No. 24895
>>24891 >to owe 2 watermelons is either to have borrowed 2 watermelons, Not necessarily.
>to have borrowed 1 watermelon, with added interest, Not necessarily.
>or to have borrowed something in equivalence with 2 watermelons. Not necessarily.
You can speculate all you want, but no "proper" reason is needed. Bob can promise Carl that Bob will give Carl 2 watermelons. From that point on, Bob owes Carl 2 watermelons. That's it. That is all that is necessary. It may be verbal or with a written record. It may be more or less formal. Neither quantifying nor formalizing the debt relationship requires money.
Depends on how you define equal use-value. If you talk of the same object at different times as the same use-value, then it can make sense to give the same use-value now for the same use-value later, especially if it is something that easily spoils.
But that still does not imply money.
Anonymous 23-08-25 20:13:42 No. 24896
>>24895 >the hypothetical is unconditional in its terms; nothing more is able to be implied in the trade relation retarded nominalism that destroys reason. i have sufficiently demonstrated the necessary conditions by which debt should be contracted; for bob to owe 2 watermelons, there must be an opposing object to what is owed which was originally borrowed. in your own mind, give context to bob and carl's relationship and see how it could have got there, since this would then have practical bearing on reality.
>having two commodities equate doesnt imply money then what is their standard of value measured by? what is the equal unit measured between them?
Anonymous 23-08-25 22:37:01 No. 24897
>>24896 >what is their standard of value measured by? Why would that be necessary? Kids can come up with any sort of trade of an action now for a promise to do something later. Since the fulfillment of the trade is not instant, there is a debt relation. These things or services they trade can have prices that the kids are simply not aware of or these things or services can be so peculiar and specific that they do no have prices known to any adult either. A universal measuring rod for comparisons sanctioned by society is absolutely not necessary here.
You fashion yourself a big thinker who can look at more than present life, but you are constantly hallucinating the whole institutional monstrosity of contemporary capitalism into everything and even imagine these institutional tentacles to reach wider than they actually do in the here and now.
Anonymous 24-08-25 08:47:28 No. 24898
>>24897 >Why would that be necessary? because it would denote a quantitative relationship between items. what sets the standard? bob owes carl 2 watermelons. why? tell me.
Anonymous 24-08-25 14:04:52 No. 24901
hi, popping in to say that …
Anonymous 24-08-25 14:17:14 No. 24903
>>24902 >>24901 oh and 'looking' is synonymous to 'observation' which has implications on science as being the study of 'mere appearances' which says something about the limitations (or superficiality) of science. I am not against science, and it does describe what is 'real' and 'really happening' but it doesn't describe whether there is something 'more than meets the eye'
1.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/more+than+meets+the+eye 2.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific%20method ("observation")
Anonymous 24-08-25 14:27:36 No. 24904
>>24901 oh, and i forgot to mention this concept as it relates to the senses → "supernormal stimulus" (such as: porn, junk food, youtube shorts and tiktoks with bright colors, music, sexy people, and other things that are generally sensual, erotic, and would make Cupid or Eros blush)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus Anonymous 25-08-25 03:44:46 No. 24909
>>24898 >what sets the standard? bob owes carl 2 watermelons. why? Because Bob decided that.
Anonymous 25-08-25 07:50:59 No. 24910
>>24909 >bob decided to be in debt for no reason you have become entirely unintelligible
Anonymous 26-08-25 02:13:10 No. 24914
>>24910 You have given no reason for why there needs to be a "standard" for a trade to happen. When two people trade, the basis is
difference in evaluation. Bob would rather have what Carl got and Carl would rather have what Bob offers for that. So what else do you need? You seem to believe that people can't count watermelons until someone invents money. (And, if you are the same person who has blessed us in the political economy threads on /leftypol/, you also seem to believe that nobody can measure work time unless wages are paid. But it's everybody else who is unintelligible!)
Anonymous 26-08-25 10:05:21 No. 24916
>>24914 >Bob would rather have what Carl got and Carl would rather have what Bob offers for that. right, so you are finally agreeing with what i said days ago:
>>24891 >it is necessarily the case then, that what is owed must be different than what has been borrowed, and so (X) is measured by (Y). this is done by pure deduction, in the case of the sentence "bob owes 2 watermelons". now we can make progress.
the measure of value in this case would be the other person's commodity; (X) is measured by (Y) and (Y) is measured by (X). there are two measures however; qualitative and quantitative - (X) may be traded with (Y) on the basis of usefulness (which carl menger affirms as an unequal relationship), yet once we begin to quantify goods in terms of amount, a standard of value must arise. (X) may trade for (Y), but how many of (X) may 1,000 (Y) trade for? it must be measured by a third thing, which is common to both - aristotle says this is demand, smith and marx say labour-time; graeber says debt. the blogger says nothing.
Anonymous 26-08-25 22:51:46 No. 24918
>>24916 >yet once we begin to quantify goods in terms of amount, a standard of value must arise. There are several jumps in your argument: You assert this false necessity of a second object, then, having "proven" this necessity of a second object (by merely asserting it repeatedly), you continue as if you had proven the necessity of a
third object. To recognize there are multiple units of something does not require counting in units of a distinct object. Two watermelons are recognized as two watermelons because they are counted
in watermelon units .
Anonymous 27-08-25 09:40:50 No. 24924
>>24918 >a second object which you already admitted to having necessity:
>>24914 >Bob would rather have what Carl got and Carl would rather have what Bob offers for that. dont backtrack now.
>third object yes, to measure the proportion between the 2 others. you can measure (X) by (Y), but at a certain scale, both are measured in proportion to (Z).
>Two watermelons are recognized as two watermelons because they are counted in watermelon units. and how do we determine what watermelons are worth in relation to something else?
Anonymous 27-08-25 20:00:56 No. 24928
I have read Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry which has lead to me obtaining an audiobook copy of the Communist Manifesto and Capital.
Anonymous 28-08-25 03:35:15 No. 24940
>>24924 >>a second object >which you already admitted to having necessity No. People can make promises without reciprocity. And contrary to your claim in
>>24891 where you said
>the other option is that it is given as a gift, but in this case, there is no debt implied people can promise a
future delivery of a thing or service, and in that case they are in debt. And contrary to what you
feel about laws, promises and gifts can be quite constrained and formal. In real life, if you gift somebody something that turns out to be defective, you might get sued and actually get punished.
But let's for the moment go with assuming a trade of two distinct objects. The second object does not serve as a measure because the two objects are not equated. The trade happens precisely because they are two unequal and opposite evaluations by the trading parties. And from this you somehow go to a third object:
>and how do we determine what watermelons are worth in relation to something else? We don't have to. Recall what the original statement was about. Graeber claimed that quantifying debt requires money. The blogger said nope to that and gave the example of "1 watermelon". That ought to be enough to make the point. (I'm sure a child can understand this. Maybe go ask a child for help in your investigations.)
Anonymous 28-08-25 08:01:09 No. 24942
>>24940 >people can promise a future delivery of a thing or service, and in that case they are in debt. nope. a favour is not a debt.
>The second object does not serve as a measure because the two objects are not equated. The trade happens precisely because they are two unequal and opposite evaluations by the trading parties. so what eventually sets the common standard between objects of trade? money. therefore, quantification begins with money.
Anonymous 28-08-25 08:49:43 No. 24946
>>24940 >In real life, if you gift somebody something that turns out to be defective, you might get sued and actually get punished. >>24942 >a favour is not a debt You are replacing actual law with your headcanon about with what feels nice and just to you.
>so what eventually sets the common standard between objects of trade? money. therefore, quantification begins with money. Do you enjoy using words you don't know the meaning of? And you still don't know how to count watermelons without money?
Anonymous 28-08-25 09:59:35 No. 24947
>>24946 >if i say "i owe you one" im in debt because giving gifts is legally mandated incoherence
>quantity by your own admission, the trade of watermelons is not a quantitative relationship since there is no standard of measurement. it is purely unequal as you say, so its random, in effect. once we establish quantity however, we possess the capability of equality.
Anonymous 28-08-25 21:47:13 No. 24956
>>24947 >>if i say "i owe you one" Instead of fabricating statements, why not deal with the actual argument? The content of the statement you replaced was this:
You can get in legal trouble for gifting people defective things. And that's a fact. It would behoove you to consult legal texts instead of making these certain pronouncements about how the world works on the basis of vibes.
>by your own admission, the trade of watermelons is not a quantitative relationship I don't know if I admit to that because I don't know what you mean by "quantitative relationship" and how that relates to what Graeber said according to your headcanon, as opposed to his actual writing which is literally quoted—and not funsy-ironically-epically "quoted" in your style (you know what normal people call
lying )—in the series of blogposts that criticize Graeber. I agree with the blogger that counting watermelons does not require money. Your "replies" to that have been bizarre.
Anonymous 29-08-25 06:54:51 No. 24962
>>24956 >You can get in legal trouble for gifting people defective things. give me an example
>I don't know what you mean by "quantitative relationship" a relationship of quantities in accordance to a common measurement.
>you know what normal people call lying give me a single example of me misrepresenting the blogger
>I agree with the blogger that counting watermelons does not require money thats not his argument; his argument is that you can quantify debt without money, and he gives an example:
>The idea that goods can not be quantified except through money seems to me an absurdity ex facie. If you give me a watermelon today, and we agree that I will bring you a watermelon tomorrow, it is completely understood that I am expected to bring one (1) watermelon so the blogger has the sense to understand that the cost of a watermelon must be measured by the cost of something else - even if another watermelon. this is something you are incessantly avoiding despite already admitting to its logical necessity. the question then arises, under what practical circumstances does this trade begin, and how do we quantify exchange between heterogeneous items at scale?
Anonymous 29-08-25 22:21:09 No. 24970
>>24962 >>You can get in legal trouble for gifting people defective things. >give me an example No, as this is common knowledge. This is like disputing that the Playstation can draw triangles. You are stalling the discussion. Disputing this just reveals that you are either extremely dishonest or lack basic knowledge about how the world works (or both).
>>24962 >give me a single example of me misrepresenting the blogger You just lied in this discussion about what
the comment said you wrote your phony "reply" to and this was pointed out in the comment you are "replying" to now.
>so the blogger has the sense to understand that the cost of a watermelon must be measured by the cost of something else - even if another watermelon. Moving the goalposts. Here is you:
>>24825 >>quantification requires money >yes You asserting something
else entirely than the item being the
necessary measure for quantifying it. (Note how you have to move the goalposts once you start actually quoting for real what was written? Guess why that is.)
Anonymous 30-08-25 07:08:42 No. 24974
>>24970 >no, i cant give an example to prove my point 🤣 good start.
>no, i cant give an example of misrepresenting the blogger 🤣 keep it up!
>"moving the goalposts" by quoting the blogger to contextualise your argument 🤔 so you dont even understand the discussion?
>i said that you need money quantify debt debt is a quantity and money is debt, so its self-evident. thats why if we flesh out the watermelon trade example, you are forced to agree with me, so cower away from it. i would suggest you stop replying to deny any further humiliation to yourself.
Anonymous 30-08-25 07:24:26 No. 24975
>>24974 >cant give an example Here you go, comrade retard. German law:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__521.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__524.html I don't think one has to be a lawyer or even an adult to guess correctly that gifting something defective with malicious intent can be an illegal move. I'm not buying that you don't know this. Now here is the part where I can believe you don't know (because you are a dumbass):
Gross negligence (that's
grobe(r) Fahrlässigkeit in the above texts) when gifting can also get you into legal trouble.
It's likewise in Swiss law (site requires javascript):
https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/27/317_321_377/fr#art_248 Is there any other country you would want? Do you actually believe the law systems in the UK and USA are constructed without the concept of negligence?
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you having a stroke?
Anonymous 30-08-25 07:48:45 No. 24976
>>24975 >finally gives an example that wasnt hard, was it? we just need an example of me misrepresenting the blogger now.
concerning what you posted, in translating the laws, it appears that they only concern a concept of "donation", which is not how you could legally designate interpersonal gifting. what youre saying is that these examples violate a contract, which was not what we were discussing. here's what you claim:
>>24940 >In real life, if you gift somebody something that turns out to be defective, you might get sued and actually get punished. you specify "somebody", implying interpersonal trade, not a stated contractual obligation. this is why you have been baffling to talk to, because you lack context. if, lets say, i promised my kid a playstation for christmas but i got them an xbox instead, am.i a criminal? according to you, its "basic knowledge" that my son can call the police on me:
>>24970 >Disputing this just reveals that you are either extremely dishonest or lack basic knowledge about how the world works (or both). no wonder you didnt want to give your example 🤣 as i said, you should stop replying or its going to get worse for you.
>What the fuck is that supposed to mean? wht are you even talking to me if youre so lost?
Anonymous 30-08-25 17:17:36 No. 24978
>>24901 buddhism has some some insights into this i suggest you look into it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha Anonymous 30-08-25 20:16:25 No. 24979
>>24976 >that wasnt hard, was it? Yeah it was not hard showing you are wrong because I made the claim that you are wrong about legal matters on the basis of me already having that knowledge and not intuiting it like you. (I have to say I find depressing to think about how one might arrive at an intuition of how the world works that is like yours.)
Anonymous 30-08-25 20:43:28 No. 24980
>>24979 no, you were quite incorrect in your implications that interpersonal gifting entails a legal requirement, otherwise you would be defending yourself instead of just lashing out like a wounded animal - its impossible to dignify the nonsense youve been posting though, so its also understandable why you'd be taking attention away from your blunder. in any case, you have literally been wrong about everything since the moment you approached me with such bad conduct. hopefully you've learned from this experience and will try to be a better person in the future, so that you dont end up in another battle for your senseless pride.
Anonymous 30-08-25 21:03:59 No. 24981
>>24980 >you'd be taking attention away from your blunder I literally told you about a concept existing for real in law which you did not know about, preferring your own hallucinations (and being very confident in them).
You wrote in
>>24976 >it appears that they only concern a concept of "donation", which is not how you could legally designate interpersonal gifting. You are not a German lawyer. You are not a Swiss lawyer. You want to argue over the finer points of law texts written in languages you don't speak. You know nothing about American law either (and you can barely follow a conversation in English). Do you think it's different in Italian law? You don't speak Italian either, but your galaxy-sized ego will just sail through the challenge I'm sure. Just make up some shit in your head and assert it. Now you assert that gifting something just doesn't happen with written contracts. It's not a real gift then, you say, but something else. But gifting with contracts happens all the time. Do you want to read some more German laws about gifting? And then tell the world that can't be true and it's not what the Germans really mean by that, they just don't know it yet themselves, but you do! Oh those wacky people on the continent, surely the Brits don't have contracts about gifting things you think, eh? Do you want to bet on that? You want to make a big deal about the difference of meaning between "donation" and "gift" in your analysis of law texts, law texts that you have to read in translation because you can't read the fucking original language; and then this difference in meaning of these two terms you believe in doesn't even exist in English. (This is the one thing you have actually learned from the blogger, but that's because the blogger makes it clear in context that he means one of the two to be more formal and could as well have chosen that attachment just the other way around.) Maybe you have a beautiful fictional country in your head with its own legalese language where it all makes perfect sense, but probably you do not even have that.
How do you actually believe people run a business in real life? Do you believe a verbal agreement does not count for anything? What is your headcanon on that? Perhaps a handshake is necessary to make it real in your head. How have you developed this model of a world where spoken words count for almost nothing I can only imagine: If the way you act on here is representative of how you act offline, people don't respect your words because you don't respect your own words either. They think: "Words don't mean anything to this cretin." And they reflect this back in how they treat you.
Anonymous 30-08-25 21:19:49 No. 24982
And now back to what the thread is supposed to be about:
>Tell us about what you're thinking about, what you're reading, an interesting thing you have learned today, anything! I am reading this about how to maximize clarity in math papers:
https://dwest.web.illinois.edu/grammar.html Anonymous 31-08-25 08:04:51 No. 24985
>>24981 >I literally told you about a concept existing for real in law the law you posted did not reflect the concept you were describing, which is why you cannot defend yourself. you were mistaken about the law itself.
>You are not a German lawyer. You are not a Swiss lawyer. You want to argue over the finer points of law texts written in languages you don't speak 🤣🤣🤣 dont double down on your ignorance, bro.
>Now you assert that gifting something just doesn't happen with written contracts where? you implied interpersonal gift exchange as a legal category of concern; i disputed it and was proven right due to citing the qualification of "donation" in the law, which you aptly left out by posting french and german pages rather than transcribing them. you can theoretically contract a gift, but nowhere was this ever implied or discussed. so, wrong again. but i'm used to this by now. i just wish you would stop boring me with your prideful insistence.
>angry incoherent rambling just remember that you are really just mad at yourself for getting into this unwinnable battle. as i say, the sooner you log off, the better things will be for you.
Anonymous 01-09-25 03:39:51 No. 25011
>>24985 >the law you posted did not reflect the concept you were describing What's the difference you believe to be there then.
>was proven right due to citing the qualification of "donation" in the law There is no distinction in law between gift and donation. This is literally pointed out by
>>24981 (I do not believe you read to the end of that post before writing your reply):
>You want to make a big deal about the difference of meaning between "donation" and "gift" in your analysis of law texts, law texts that you have to read in translation because you can't read the fucking original language; and then this difference in meaning of these two terms you believe in doesn't even exist in English. (This is the one thing you have actually learned from the blogger, but that's because the blogger makes it clear in context that he means one of the two to be more formal and could as well have chosen that attachment just the other way around.) This category of "interpersonal gift exchange" as something legally fundamentally different from other exchanges exists in your head. I don't know how it got there. But it's certainly not by reading law. If you want "interpersonal gift exchange" to mean "gifting without written contract" in this conversation, that is fine with me, but you have to understand that I disagree with your speculation about how the legal system works in that situation. And I am stubborn in this because my disagreement is rooted in knowledge.
Anonymous 01-09-25 05:34:46 No. 25012
Reading Richard Cantillon at the moment. His work predates Adam Smith by a generation, so perhaps Cantillon is the real starting point of the classical economists (if such a starting point can be determined).
Anonymous 01-09-25 07:24:13 No. 25013
>>25011 >What's the difference you believe to be there then. we were talking about interpersonal gifting and you imply that if i gave my son a broken playstation, he can sue me - this is not reality.
>There is no distinction in law between gift and donation and what makes a gift or donation subject to law? a contract, presumably, which is not how interpersonal gifting works.
>And I am stubborn in this because my disagreement is rooted in knowledge. you are stubborn because you are irrationally opposed to me, from the very beginning, where you mocked me for trying to help a fellow anon by providing sources. then you disputed the celebrated david graeber by an irrelevant blog which itself seemed to be out on a witch hunt against anti-marxist heretics. you are just pathological, so understand that nothing here is noble. im bored talking to you.
Anonymous 01-09-25 07:41:03 No. 25014
>>25012 according to marx, classical political economy begins with sir william petty (1662) in his treatise on taxation (marx also claims that petty is perhaps a founder of statistics):
>William Petty, the father of Political Economy, and to some extent the founder of Statistics… https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#87a >Pctty regards himself as the founder of a new science. He says that his method “is not yet very usual,” “for instead of using only comparative and superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments,” he proposes to speak “in Terms of Number, Weight or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense, and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature; leaving those that depend upon the mutable Minds, Opinions, Appetites, and Passions of particular Men, to the Consideration of others” (Political Arithmetick, etc., London, 1699, Preface). https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htm#14 what makes his work "political economy" is that it deals in the economy of the state or nation (although, in aristotle's "oeconomica" and xenophon's "on revenues" they do the same thing, just less systematically). smith similarly approaches "national" wealth. marx also makes reference to people like petty and benjamin franklin (1729) as deriving a labour theory of value, before adam smith. people like aristotle approach a labour theory of cost, but he does not perceive that it is "labour" which is itself exchanged, but rather that articles of labour are exchanged according to supply and demand. someone like thomas aquinas (1274) in his "just price" theory of goods (summa ii.ii.Q77) also sees the reciprocity of labour being equal to its output, but does not substantialise labour in the same way that later classical economists do. some claim that ibn khaldun (1377) founds a labour theory of value, but reading over his text in "muqadimmah", it appears that when he refers to "profit" it is not in the sense of surplus value, but only personal gain. he perhaps has a labour theory of use-value therefore, but this is only intuitive where it regards the mechanics of production, and not the logic of exchange (which is where the LTV really matters).
Anonymous 02-09-25 03:04:36 No. 25020
>>25013 >>There is no distinction in law between gift and donation >and what makes a gift or donation subject to law? a contract False.
Anonymous 02-09-25 07:09:13 No. 25021
>>25020 so what makes a gift subject to law?
Anonymous 02-09-25 13:46:36 No. 25023
>>25021 Just go through this bit by bit: Does a transfer of property require a contract?
What do you do when you go to the supermarket and buy something? Do you sign a contract? Is there a handshake? Perhaps there is some talk, but you don't have to say anything. Just hand over the money. So there is no written contract required. You are a citizen and the law system applies to you. You don't "log out" of the law system by doing things without a written record. Not even saying something is required. It is enough that there is an action that reasonable people interpret in a certain way.
Alice and Bob are at a party. Alice knows Bob has a peanut allergy and Alice gives Bob food with peanuts in it while claiming it contains none. Whether claiming it due to malicious intent or because she just couldn't be arsed to check, Alice can get into legal trouble. She cannot avoid punishment by pointing out the lack of a written contract or that it is was a gift.
Glownonymous 02-09-25 15:54:16 No. 25024
Why did the capitalist world ally itself with the Soviet Union against the Nazis?
Anonymous 02-09-25 16:18:47 No. 25025
>>25023 so the status of the gift itself is irrelevant to its consequences? thanks for proving yourself wrong yet again.
Anonymous 02-09-25 16:49:11 No. 25026
>>25024 to prevent an eurasian hegemon, be it soviets once they reach normandy or nazi germany once they reach the urals
Glownonymous 02-09-25 17:03:01 No. 25027
>>25026 Can you be more specific? Why were the Soviets seen as a lesser evil than Nazi Germany? The USSR threatened capital, Nazi Germany praised capital. And the Soviets gained a lot more territory after the war, so it just seems really confusing to me.
Anonymous 03-09-25 02:56:36 No. 25032
>>25025 What do you mean by status of the gift?
Anonymous 03-09-25 08:11:46 No. 25033
>>25032 the fact of something being a gift is irrelevant to its consequences. if you willingly poison someone, you are charged for something other than providing a malicious "gift". the status of the gift is immaterial to malice.
Anonymous 04-09-25 01:48:36 No. 25034
>>25033 Correct me if I'm misrepresenting you. For convenience I'm numbering claims:
Your position was:
1.
There is a legal distinction between gifting and other property transfers in that gifting has no legal duties attached. Your argument in support of that distinction was:
2.
There is a lack of written contract in gifting .
My response was:
3.
Gifting is not always without a written contract. And:
4.
Other property transfers than gifting do not require the written form either. Points 3 and 4 are true (and I expect an average adult person to know that these points 3 and 4 are true on the basis of real-world experience). This means point 2 cannot work as support for point 1. So at this moment, point 1 lacks support.
Having found no supporting argument for your position yet does not mean the same as it being debunked, but is it plausible that you will find something? I suspect your intuition here demands something like a weight balance: Why should anyone complain about something they receive while giving nothing in turn? But the law doesn't care about that because the law does not have something like a balance to look at some objective "weight" (price? labor time?) of what each party gives. What matters is the two parties consenting.
In post
>>25023 I'm describing a situation where the type of property transfer is irrelevant to the question of punishment. That is, Alice is guilty of either bad intent or gross negligence. She does not have fewer duties because of the lack of a contract or because the transfer was a gift instead of a sale. This has been my position all along.
>if you willingly poison someone You simplify the issue because when you put it that way, you cut off the possibility of neglect instead of intent. Perhaps the example was too dramatic for you (I suspect you are mentally grouping that with events like getting stabbed). My claim is more general in that I say you can get sued for gifting a defective item and then lose in court and I stand by that. Do you still want to maintain that you do not believe that?
Anonymous 04-09-25 10:01:23 No. 25035
>>25034 >There is a legal distinction between gifting and other property transfers in that gifting has no legal duties attached. interpersonal, informal gifting, yes, which was the entire context in which we were discussing.
>There is a lack of written contract in gifting. in interpersonal, informal gifting, yes.
>Gifting is not always without a written contract. once gifting is contracted, it presumably becomes subject to law - which is something you denied.
>My claim is more general in that I say you can get sued for gifting a defective item and then lose in court and I stand by that. give me an example of this having legal precedence.
Anonymous 05-09-25 03:13:53 No. 25036
hi anons. i've been swept up in the aesthetics of leftism without actually reading theory for almost an entire year; naturally i am trying to remedy that by reading some basic texts. right now i've started blackshirts and reds. what are some other short introductory texts you all recommend
Anonymous 05-09-25 16:18:55 No. 25037
>>25027 this was the situation at the eastern front after pearl harbour when the us declared war on the axis, in that moment it seemed like the ussr was about to lose and the nazis would be able to focus on securing their conquered territories and impede any army landing on western europe
after the turn beginning at stalingrad the soviets could safely win the war up to france, balkans and italy, however since the wallies' were able to land on france and italy this meant a diminished soviet sphere on europe
Anonymous 05-09-25 16:30:16 No. 25038
>>25037 by that point the soviets abided to a great extent to the new world order imposed on potsdam
would it be logical, in the long term, for the us borgeoisie to support nazi germany? probably, but the borgeoisie doesn't always think as a unified class, instead seeing their proximal economic interest: this would also mean a competing, more ruthless imperialist center conflicting with us markets
Anonymous 06-09-25 18:08:00 No. 25057
>>25023 >What do you do when you go to the supermarket and buy something? Do you sign a contract? Is there a handshake? Perhaps there is some talk, but you don't have to say anything. Just hand over the money. >>25035 >once gifting is contracted, it presumably becomes subject to law Does buying and selling become subject to law only when there is a written contract.
Anonymous 06-09-25 18:37:15 No. 25059
>>25057 >Does buying and selling become subject to law only when there is a written contract. buying and selling isnt "gifting"
Anonymous 06-09-25 19:08:33 No. 25060
>>25059 Is gifting a property transfer.
Anonymous 06-09-25 19:30:41 No. 25062
>>25060 yes; a voluntary property transfer which entails no necessary reciprocity.
Anonymous 06-09-25 19:46:58 No. 25067
>>25062 What makes the transfer of ownership of a movable object real:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__929.html Note that § 929 BGB does not ask for a written contract and does not distinguish between selling and gifting.
Anonymous 06-09-25 20:12:34 No. 25070
>>25067 >What makes the transfer of ownership of a movable object real the consent of the property owner - which is why gifting, borrowing, purchasing and stealing an item are all different things.
>selling and gifting are the same thing is this the hill youre dying on? and you still havent fulfilled my request for legal precedent for your propositions. give me a legal case of someone being charged for sending a bad gift. its been two days; youve had time to research.
Anonymous 06-09-25 21:07:08 No. 25072
>>25070 >gifting, borrowing, purchasing and stealing an item are all different things They are different words and they are different concepts; but, and here is a jump in your argument, they are not different in the way you claim them to be. This difference does not exist. Throughout this fruity debate, the support of your position that
the person giving a gift cannot be responsible for flaws as long as there is no written contract is something you have been building on nothing but how you personally feel about how it should be, repeated yourself, thrown in some laughing emojis. You have not shown
any laws.
But you have been shown laws:
Comment
>>24975 stated a person giving a gift is responsible for malicious intent or gross negligence, § 521 BGB.
Comment
>>25067 stated property transfer does not require the written form, § 929 BGB.
Draw the logical consequence from these.
Anonymous 06-09-25 21:10:31 No. 25073
>>25072 >the person giving a gift cannot be responsible for flaws as long as there is no written contract yes.
give me a single legal case to prove me wrong.
Anonymous 06-09-25 21:39:43 No. 25079
>>25073 And then what? And then you say the judge was mistaken. And you actually would have a better argument than your usual drivel (still a weak argument of course), because judges do make mistakes and so explicit laws illustrating a point are more important than individual cases. Alas, I have already shown you the relevant laws while you have shown nothing.
So right back at you: Show a law contradicting the laws already shown ITT by making the exception that you hallucinate to exist or do the weaker argument and show a case being dismissed.
Anonymous 06-09-25 21:56:34 No. 25080
>>25079 >cant provide a legal case so you have zero evidence for your claims then, that a bad gift is a legally actionable offence? this means that you are basically making things up then getting mad when i dont believe you… you are a weirdo.
Anonymous 06-09-25 22:04:30 No. 25081
>>25080 >so you have zero evidence for your claims then Aside from the fact that this is literally stated in laws which I showed to you?
Anonymous 07-09-25 10:20:01 No. 25089
>>25081 i already showed you that the laws refer to donations, not interpersonal gifting. stop talking to me if you have nothing more to say.
Anonymous 08-09-25 05:50:07 No. 25096
>>25089 >i already showed you that the laws refer to donations, not interpersonal gifting Lie.
Anonymous 08-09-25 09:57:24 No. 25097
>>25096 here:
>>24975 >>24976 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__521.html >The donor is only liable for intent and gross negligence https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__524.html >(1) If the donor fraudulently conceals a defect in the gifted item, they are obligated to compensate the donee for any resulting damage. >(2) If the donor promised to deliver a thing specified only by type, which they were to acquire later, the donee may, if the delivered item is defective and the defect was known to the donor at the time of acquisition or remained unknown due to gross negligence, demand that a defect-free item be delivered instead of the defective one. If the donor fraudulently concealed the defect, the donee may demand damages for non-performance instead of delivery of a defect-free item. The provisions applicable to warranty claims for defects in a sold item apply mutatis mutandis to these claims. https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/27/317_321_377/fr#art_248 article 248:
>(1) The donor is liable to the donee for damages arising from the donation only in cases of fraud or gross negligence. (2) The donor is only liable for the security promised for the thing donated or the assigned claim. article 249:
>The donor may revoke the manual gifts and promises to give that he has executed and sue for restitution up to the amount of the other party's current enrichment: 1.100 when the donee has committed a serious criminal offense against the donor or one of his relatives; 2. when he has seriously failed to fulfill the DUTIES IMPOSED BY LAW towards the donor or his family; 3. when he fails, without legitimate cause, to fulfill the obligations encumbering the donation. are we done here?
Anonymous 08-09-25 12:35:59 No. 25098
>>25097 >donor Since you know German so well, tell me which German words to use for:
the gift
to gift
the act of gifting as a noun
the person giving a gift
Anonymous 08-09-25 16:19:00 No. 25099
>>25098 >LIES!! <well, actually yes. like i say, if you have nothing more to provide, stop talking to me. thx.
Anonymous 09-09-25 03:37:44 No. 25101
>>25096 >Lie. >>25099 >LIES!! Incredible. You can't even quote a single-word post correctly.
And you know why I said that you lie? Because you do. You claimed you had shown something about the laws. But you did not. You then made a flimsy attempt of showing something through crappy machine translation in response to the post calling you out. I don't know if you understand how the arrow of time works, but me calling you out for lying was correct. And you are now adding another lie because the rest of what you just said cannot be a paraphrase or summary, nor even count as sarcastic summary or a just a humorous exaggeration by any stretch of imagination.
Now, to your flimsy attempt of dealing with the actual law (which is so weak it hardly counts as attempt, machine translation and putting things in UPPERCASE, seriously?):
You want to make a big deal about the difference of meaning between "donation" and "gift" in your analysis of law texts, law texts that you have to read in translation because you can't read the fucking original language; and then this difference in meaning of these two terms you believe in doesn't even exist in English. (This is the one thing you have actually learned from the blogger, but that's because the blogger makes it clear in context that he means one of the two to be more formal and could as well have chosen that attachment just the other way around.) Notice something? I already told you this twice. But I will reward your "effort" by acknowledging the stuff you put in UPPERCASE. Stuff in the law that emphasizes duties. Yes. You should definitely highlight that if you want to emphasize that gifting is regulated by law and that there are duties around gifting even if there is no written contract. Which is my position. Now why did you highlight that? Perhaps you have forgotten that you are not me.
According to you, gifting is something that happens without contract, as opposed to a donation, which you say happens with contract. There is no such hard distinction in German nor (and at least this you should know) in English. You think when somebody says they "donated old clothes" they must have signed a contract for that or what? Throughout this you have argued only on the basis of how you personally feel what the world should be like. And worse, you have disregarded laws explicitly saying it is not so. Of course I will not tolerate your nonsense. You don't know anything about German law. Nor Swiss law.
And anyway, burger law is not really that different and burger lawyers will tell you as much about your zero-point-zero-responsibility hypothesis in gifting. (Where did you even learn this nonsense? "Breadtube University Presents: Le gIft eConOmY whERe n0bOdy iS rEspoNsiBle foR anYthInG"?)
Anonymous 09-09-25 08:15:49 No. 25102
>>25101 >gifting is regulated by law and that there are duties around gifting even if there is no written contract. give me a single example of legal precedent, otherwise you have no evidence that you can be arrested for giving a bad gift. why cant you provide evidence?
>legal duties as opposed to non-legal duties… so you contradict yourself by assuming all interpersonal transactions are subject to law. so then, there must be a condition of law, which i see as a contract, verbal or written.
>According to you, gifting is something that happens without contract, as opposed to a donation, which you say happens with contract. thats what makes it subject to law.
>You think when somebody says they "donated old clothes" they must have signed a contract for that or what? what makes a donation subject to law?
Anonymous 09-09-25 08:31:50 No. 25103
>>25101 >>25102 to answer my own question, since i have no patience for your filibustering, i will present you german gift law:
https://www.german-probate-lawyer.com/publications/detail/gifts-in-german-civil-law-4378.html What constitutes a Gift (Schenkung):
<Under a gift CONTRACT, a DONOR uses his own assets to enrich a CONTRACTUAL PARTNER without receiving money or any other kind of payment and/or consideration in exchange. <There are at least two parties to the CONTRACT, the DONOR (Schenkender) and the DONEE (Beschenkter); The asset subject to the GIFT CONTRACT is specified; and The parties agree that the transfer is gratuitous. more forms of gifting.
hand gift:
>A hand gift occurs when the donor (Schenkender) transfers something of value from his possession to the donee (Beschenkten), provided both agree that the donee does not need to compensate the donor for the gift. See § 516 (1) BGB. A hand gift of this kind DOES NOT HAVE TO COMPLY WITH ANY FORMALITIES. Promise to make a Gift:
>A promise to make a gift (Schenkungsversprechen) is LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE ONLY IF IT IS MADE IN WRITING and is notarized. so a gift is made subject to law by CONTRACT, as i originally said and have repeated. duly, shut the fuck up and never reply to me again.
Anonymous 10-09-25 02:19:34 No. 25105
>>25101 >And anyway, burger law is not really that different and burger lawyers will tell you as much about your zero-point-zero-responsibility hypothesis in gifting. Burger law firm 1 says:
<Sometimes gift-givers may have some liability. If they registered the product and received notice of a recall, they would need to notify the gift recipient about the recall. Scenarios in which it appears that the gift giver was aware of the defect and did not disclose that matter to the recipient might lead to a degree of liability for the person who purchased the defective item. https://www.polanskycichonlaw.com/blog/2023/11/who-is-liable-when-a-defective-gift-hurts-someone/ Burger law firm 2 says:
<If you knew that a product was defective at the time that you gifted it to someone, and you did not inform them of the defect, there is a possibility that you could be liable in the event of an injury. For example, let’s say you got a new bike and are gifting your old bike to your nephew, but you forgot that the brakes were bad and never got it fixed before passing it down. If your nephew goes to take it for a spin and crashes because of the bad brakes, you could be held responsible for not making someone aware of a known defect. https://margolislawoffice.com/can-i-be-sued-if-my-gift-injures-someone/ >>25102 >>gifting is regulated by law and that there are duties around gifting even if there is no written contract. >give me a single example of legal precedent Why would you need an example case when the law explicitly says that? The law explicitly saying that is a better argument than a judge deciding that, since judges can disagree with each other.
>>25103 >https://www.german-probate-lawyer.com/publications/detail/gifts-in-german-civil-law-4378.html This is an OK article, but it is an introductory article written specifically for people who want their family to inherit their stuff while minimizing the tax burden. The
broken-bike situation is not on the mind of either writer nor intended audience.
The part highlighted by you just means this property transfer does not need to comply with formalities in order to be executed. It does not mean that you cannot be held responsible if you gift an item that is defective and you fail to inform the other party of that.
Literally written right after this:
<However, a defect in form is cured by executing performance as promised. See § 518 (2) BGB. Do you understand what "cured" means here? After handing over the item, the situation is treated as if there had been a written contract all along. After handing over the gift, § 521 BGB applies.
Anonymous 10-09-25 08:16:24 No. 25107
>>25105 >Why would you need an example case when the law explicitly says that? because otherwise you have no evidence of the legal actionability of a claim. you are still avoiding the topic of what makes a gift legally subject - i have proven that its a contract. you make no claim except that if i give someone a broken watch, i can go to jail - i ask for examples; you refuse, therefore you have no evidence.
>It does not mean that you cannot be held responsible if you gift an item that is defective if i give someone a broken watch, can i go to jail?
>After handing over the item, the situation is treated as if there had been a written contract all along. so the legal transfer of property is treated in the contractual form? thanks for proving me right, again.
Anonymous 10-09-25 09:02:31 No. 25108
>>25106 >>Why would you need an example case when the law explicitly says that? >because otherwise you have no evidence of the legal actionability of a claim. geheilt (literally "healed" or as the article has it "cured") by actions that are in line with what the actions would also have been with a counterfactual formally correct procedure. Let me quote this bit from the article you linked, once more:<However, a defect in form is cured by executing performance as promised. See § 518 (2) BGB. >you have no evidence as if there had been a written contract all along.>so the legal transfer of property is treated in the contractual form?
Anonymous 10-09-25 09:22:08 No. 25109
>>25108 >You are saying the law itself isn't evidence. no im not. i provide a condition for the law - you dont.
>I can tell you that cases like that have already happened great. give an example.
>i cant give any examples too bad. you have no evidence, then.
>No you have not. yes i have, which is why i am the only one who has offered evidence from legal citation of "gift contracts".
>Can you stop making up shit for once. My example was getting into legal trouble for food poisoning so there is no law against providing a defective gift pet se? so to clear things up, answer this question directly:
- can you go to jail for gifting a broken watch?
(and you still havent explained what makes a gift transfer subject to law).
Anonymous 11-09-25 02:50:43 No. 25117
>>25109 >you have no evidence The law. § 521 BGB. Already quoted over a week ago:
>>24975 >i am the only one who has offered evidence from legal citation of "gift contracts". Earlier in the thread you made a big deal about the distinction in meaning between the words "gift" and "donation", with "donation" referring to a formal procedure with a contract, and "gift" referring to an informal procedure without a contract, a distinction which is followed by neither lay people nor lawyers, neither in America nor in Germany. You claimed that here:
>>24976 Now you have quoted yourself a law section about a "gift contract", without acknowledging your turn and without understanding at all what it means when taken in together with the other already quoted laws. The gift contract is NOT something that switches on applicability of the law for acts of gifting. (You can't just opt out of the law by informally gifting bikes with hidden defects, crack, and nuclear weapons.) The gift contract is specifically a
promise about the future . It is this promise about a future act which requires the written form in order for the person promising the gift to be held responsible for doing the future act. The requirement is really this limited. Quoting this bit to you from your own source for the third time, maybe you will notice it now:
<However, a defect in form is cured by executing performance as promised. See § 518 (2) BGB. This is called
Heilung des Formfehlers . Let's use the example of promising an old bike as a gift. If you don't gift anything at all after making the promise, you do not get in legal trouble if the promise was merely verbal. But if you then do gift the bike that is
Heilung des Formfehlers and the legal system proceeds as if you had given a written promise. If the bike has a dangerous defect, you may be liable if judged guilty of malicious intent or gross negligence, irrespective of whether the promise was in written form or not.
Anonymous 11-09-25 04:37:08 No. 25118
>>25116 I'm only a few minutes in and not sure if he's a crank, but it's certainly interesting. So at worst, really clever crankery (which is right up my alley). Haven't heard of Benjamin Lyons before. Thanks!
Anonymous 11-09-25 05:38:45 No. 25119
>>25118 (me)
Watched the rest and checked a couple of his essays. Hmmm all very vague. He could get really good if he tried writing something longer and deeper instead of dabbling.
Anonymous 11-09-25 08:18:23 No. 25120
>>25117 >Earlier in the thread you made a big deal about the distinction in meaning between the words "gift" and "donation" yes, because you were conflating the relationship between informal, interpersonal gifting and legally actionable trade (of which the condition you have still not defined, while i have). you implied that a "defective" gift will get you in legal trouble - i suggest a broken watch, you deny it, therefore proving that no such relationship exists except under specific conditions. i ask for the conditions, you refuse to provide them (restating that a defective gift gets you in trouble, which you already disputed, proving me right).
>If the bike has a DANGEROUS defect, you may be liable if judged guilty of malicious intent or gross negligence, irrespective of whether the promise was in written form or not. DANGEROUS defect? MALICIOUS intent? so the law has nothing to do with the form of the gift itself, like you have already disputed with the example of the watch? therefore, no one is tried for giving a bad gift, but for malicious intent or gross negligence generally - for harm sustained by the gift. this is suggested by your omission of legal precedent. a confident person would give evidence, while you give none.
to conclude:
- a person cannot be in trouble for giving a broken watch, therefore the defect of the gift must be speficic, namely, as a means for malicious intent. the legal condition of the act then has nothing to do with the gift directly, but its underlying effect, which is under the law as a harmful act, not a failure to provide value. the gift is a means, not an end of the law, except where a contract is written (something you denied existing until 2 seconds ago). so then, you have admitted that i was right about everything and it would be preferable for you to desist now. thanks.
Anonymous 12-09-25 04:17:11 No. 25123
>>25120 >>Earlier in the thread you made a big deal about the distinction in meaning between the words "gift" and "donation" >yes, because you were conflating the relationship between informal, interpersonal gifting and legally actionable trade False. You were confusing "formal" and "informal" with "donation" and "gifting". And your confusion was pointed out in comment
>>24940 (bolding some bits):
>people can promise a future delivery of a thing or service, and in that case they are in debt. And contrary to what you feel about laws, promises and gifts can be quite constrained and formal. In real life, if you gift somebody something that turns out to be defective, you might get sued and actually get punished. I bolded these bits to contrast with how you misrepresent the argument:
>you implied that a "defective" gift will get you in legal trouble You are exaggerating.
>- i suggest a broken watch, you deny it I guess what you mean to convey here with "you deny it" is that I don't make use of your example. That's because it is lacking context. You were told in comment
>>24975 that the one giving a defective gift might be held responsible if there is malicious intent or gross negligence. You need to flesh out your scenario.
>i ask for the conditions, you refuse to provide them Ctrl-f this thread for "gross negligence" to see you are full of shit about no presented conditions. Ctrl-f for "bike" to go through an example provided.
>restating that a defective gift gets you in trouble You are making the same exaggeration again.
>no one is tried for giving a bad gift, but for malicious intent or gross negligence generally What level of idealism are you on, son? What is the harm done to others by having evil thoughts? The law explicitly refers to people in roles like giver and receiver of an object. These aren't references to just thoughts in the head about how people feel about themselves, but observable actions.
>to conclude: >- a person cannot be in trouble for giving a broken watch, therefore the defect of the gift must be speficic, namely, as a means for malicious intent. the legal condition of the act then has nothing to do with the gift directly, but its underlying effect, which is under the law as a harmful act, not a failure to provide value. the gift is a means, not an end of the law, except where a contract is written (something you denied existing until 2 seconds ago). so then, you have admitted that i was right about everything and it would be preferable for you to desist now. thanks. Holy shit this reads like what a lawyer would say in a Sonichu comic!
Anonymous 12-09-25 11:13:07 No. 25126
>>25123 >gross negligence is the legal condition wonder why you didnt say this a hundred posts ago?
and so you admit that what people are charged with is gross negligence or malicious harm, NOT the failure to provide an adequate gift. so, this is the end of the conversation. thanks for wasting my time.
Anonymous 13-09-25 08:47:27 No. 25128
>>25126 >wonder why you didnt say this a hundred posts ago? First mention of "gross negligence" in this thread is
>>24975 from two weeks ago, or about 50 posts ago.
>and so you admit that what people are charged with is gross negligence or malicious harm, NOT the failure to provide an adequate gift. The distinction you make here sounds very innovative because § 521 BGB declares specifically what the
gift giver is liable for and not some random dude. Can you give an example of what you mean by delivering harm to a person
through an adequate gift ?
Anonymous 13-09-25 12:48:15 No. 25129
>>25128 you already conceded your point.
stop replying to me.
thanks.
Anonymous 13-09-25 18:14:59 No. 25130
>>25129 >you already conceded your point. The original point was that gift givers can be held legally responsible. I stand by that point. Later posts are about the circumstances when this is applicable and give examples of defective gifts. These posts are not taking back the point, they are just more specific (note the "can" in the first point). You tried to show an exemption from liability for gifts without written contracts by quoting an article that mentions § 518 BBG (Form des Schenkungsversprechens), but this is for promises about
future gifts only, and so gifting without written contract does not protect the gift giver from liability
after the gift transfer. As explained to you multiple times, liability of the gift giver is explicitly stated in § 521 BGB (Haftung des Schenkers), and this is not limited to gifts with contracts.
Anonymous 14-09-25 06:33:10 No. 25134
Who else enjoyed this thread's epic debate about whether you can gift people dangerous broken trash and be innocent as long as there is no contract?
Anonymous 30-09-25 04:19:25 No. 25188
>>25012 Cantillon:
<All these artisans and entrepreneurs serve each other, as well as the nobility. The fact that their upkeep ultimately falls on property owners and nobles is often overlooked. It is not perceived that all the little houses in a city, such as we have described, depend upon and subsist at the expense of the great houses. However, it will be shown later that all the classes and inhabitants of a state live at the expense of the property owners. Yeah right.
Anonymous 04-10-25 21:16:21 No. 25209
Finished Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl. Basic sensible advice, with a few "comic strips" by Paul Mason thrown in. I'm putting up sarcastic quotes, because that stuff has the look of a comic strip, but it's spiritually a bit too close to things like traffic signs and health warnings.
Anonymous 14-10-25 17:32:02 No. 25242
Been working through "Set the Night on Fire" about the spectrum of liberal and radical movements in Los Angeles during the 60s, but it at the same time makes me realize that the period from the 1980s to right before 9/11 might as well be a black hole. Sure I know about the general stroke of neoliberalization and the Reagan years, but the movement side with the exception of the Battle of Seattle remains unknown to me.
Anonymous 19-10-25 20:03:56 No. 25257
Just went through the booklet As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (1903), a pioneer of self-help gospel.<Here is a man who is wretchedly poor. He is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved, yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity, and is not only totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts. <Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. <Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body.
Anonymous 22-10-25 19:44:03 No. 25281
>>19860 Currently reading up on Zapata and the history of Mexican revolution. Very nice book. Absolute clusterfuck of a historical period. Feels like a perfect example of how the Russian revolution would have looked like if there was no organized vanguard.
The starting point of the revolution is essentially the same as in Russia: A westernizing tyrant keeps fucking over the peasants and suppressing the bourgeoisie until the country is in such a deadlock that the whole thing blows up. It results in a peasants revolt, but the revolt keep getting swept up by various liberal reformers promising them the land reforms they want, only to inevitably get fucked over one way or the other. They get more radical as time goes on, but theyre so exclusively concerned with agrarian issues that they cannot really sweep up the rest of the population into their revolution. Zapata was a very impressive leader of the movement, and did the best he could, but was clearly not ideologically and strategically up for the task. You can tell he was uncomfortable dealing with any political issue or diplomatic relation outside of the agrarian concerns of his native province in Morelos.
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