/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 14:55:22 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 20:20:21 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.
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 07-01-24 03:14:50 No. 21363
>>21362 The Knowledge Corrupt
e rs
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 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.
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 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
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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).
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.
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 .)
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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.
Moffin' 13-12-24 17:27:50 No. 23167
I have been reading "Red Code", italian book about our health service.
Spoiler: the situation is pretty bad
>>>/leftypol/2078215 So far, our basic family medics have become petit-bourgeois; and as such have been using their "unions" to minimize public service and slowly substitute it with their private studios and services, which has worsened the overall system in a number of ways, starring with the fact that people with low-urgency needs now flood our hospitals Emergency Rooms because they can't access affordable basic healthcare or checkups otherwise.
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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 21-04-25 10:32:26 No. 24177
>>24160 Consider Marx's
Fragment on Machines Video unrelated
Anonymous 29-05-25 12:27:09 No. 24384
re-reading the iliad, i have come upon some passages which may be of interest for marxists (citations are dependent on the format of fitzgerald's own work):<"Never have I had plunder like your own from any Trojan stronghold battered down by the Akhaians. I have seen more action hand to hand in those assaults than you have, but when the time for sharing comes, the greater share is always yours. Worn out with battle I carry off some trifle to my ships. Well, this time I make sail for home. Better to take now to my ships. Why linger, cheated of winnings, to make wealth for you?" [the iliad, fitzgerald translation, book 1, lines 128-190] <"your spirit's like an ax-edge whetted sharp that goes through timber, when a good shipwright hews out a beam: the tool triples his power" [the iliad, fitzgerald translation, book 3, lines 13-70] <"One of the oldest economists and most original philosophers of England—Thomas Hobbes—has already, in his Leviathan, instinctively hit upon this point overlooked by all his successors. He says: “The value or worth of a man is, as in all other things, his price: that is, so much as would be given for the Use of his Power.’’ [value, price and profit, chapter 7] <"is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish? But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model. A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew. [It] is its result, rather, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with the fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, and could alone arise, can never return." [grundrisse, introduction, part 3]
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