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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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File: 1751906337662.jpg (47.42 KB, 259x390, The_Ancient_Economy.jpg)

 

When it comes to the study of ancient economic history, one is faced with serious difficulties as a beginner. The usual textbooks normally cover the "histoire événementielle", i.e., the succession of notable historical events and actors (the surface of history), while the works that do cover ancient socioeconomic history are hard to find or outdated, such as Finley's famous book.

Does anyone here have some knowledge in the matter? Can anyone recommend a study process or bibliography? Should one first read the basic textbooks of histoire événementielle and later on deepen the matter or skip directly to the socioeconomic outlook?

I am very lost in this matter and I don't know where to begin, and I'm sure a lot of people are in the same situation in here. And I believe it is very important to have, at least, a broad outlook on the progression of economic history until capitalism, to maybe deepen more specifically in modern history and economics, but with a general view of what came before and the evolution of the present mode of production.
9 posts and 1 image reply omitted.

>>2376098
read how the world works by cockshott

>>2376098
Personally I read Ste Croix's Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, Anderson's Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism then Banaji's Theory as History.
However, I wouldn't necessarily recommend exactly this route for a few reasons:While Ste Croix's work does a nice job of balancing events, actors/institutions and economic movements, it does suffer from anachronism at times.
Meanwhile, while Anderson's Passages illustrates part of the "transition" between antiquity and the medieval period, he does suffer from tying modes of exploitation too strictly to modes of production ie failing to see the gradation between free peasant, serf, tenant, slave, wage laborer etc and the different relationships with the state that these different classes had in different places. This contributes to him being unable to properly deal with the empire's eastern half and its relatively high amount of involvement with the economy, even towards its twilight. After talking about the empire in the Balkans he sort of claims that the core of its economy was just the hopelessly outmoded free peasant economy that the Roman latifundia never managed to expand into.
Finally Banaji's Theory as History investigates economies from across the Old World, from Antiquity to Early Modernity. This one was amazing for attacking "stagism" and the vague blob that used to be called "the Asiatic mode of Production" that was used to describe societies where the state played a large role in the economy. However, it does go pretty far afield into the debates about these ideas, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for people that are looking to get their feet wet with economic history.
Having said all that, I might point you to Banaji's other work like Exploring the Economy of Late Antiquity which seems to be more about the economy of the time rather than the debates around it. As for the events and actors, I would say that good economic histories that aren't just Farmer's Almanacs will still make sure to make note of the highlights in between detailing grain yields.

Economics as we understand it today wasn’t the same in ancient times. The majority of people worked in agriculture and so that was their economic life and they gave a part of their proceeds as taxes. The ancient state also found ways to get people to work on building shit like buildings or roads even if it was just dirt roads through wages in the form of food beer such as ancient Egypt. Excess laborers could find work from the state as laborers for the state in state owned mines and shit, but usually slaves worked ancient mines. What we know as commerce was indeed very important to the wealth of an ancient state but it was much more concentrated and specific where merchants or even state contracted merchants would send out surpluses in a specific specialized good to other nations who got other goods in return. So like Italy which specialized in olives and Egypt which specialized in barley. Both would have an excess amount of those goods and trade that surplus for goods elsewhere.

>>2376098
the ancients didn't have a concept of le economy as modern people do which is a result of abundance of resources. the word didn't even exist till the late middle ages early renaissance and again it had different connotations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equites#Regal_era_(753%E2%80%93509_BC)
whats crazy is that the roman Equites was originally the class of people rich enough to own a horse that evolved into the proto-bourgeoisie



File: 1751404350666.jpg (700.46 KB, 1779x880, 5YvBqRu.jpg)

 

I feel labor vouchers restrict my choices on what I can get. For example, what if I have to choose between 2 items but I want both, such as food ingredients? What would happen to digital goods? I would expect all videogames and cinema to become public (free). But what if I can only get 1 videogame per month? How would this work?

Since game devs and artists in generals have their needs met, I suppose most content would be freely available? Similar to mods in videogames.

Also this voucher would have to be rather plentiful. What if I want to travel to another city, stay at a hotel a few nights, eat out, etc? This labor voucher sounds rather magical.

I prefer the anarchist-communism described by Kropotkin: labor is based on needs and free association, and access to good and services is based on the willing work of the people. So instead of a voucher, you live according to what people around you produce, with both its prosperity and limitations
158 posts and 30 image replies omitted.

>>2373911
Alcohol is decadence unbecoming of a worker

>>2373920
You’ve literally never met a working person

>>2373920
>no fun allowed wagie, you dont want to be hungover for your shift

>>2373920
you're retarded

>>2369917
>what gives the possibility of progress?
MY WILLPOWER



File: 1751913217392.png (87.9 KB, 1919x489, ClipboardImage.png)

 

🗽UNITED STATES POLITICS 🦅

<"The VAST majority of Americans, including most of you, are willing and enthusiastic collaborators, but not me, I'm special." Edition


Thread for the hellish discussion related to the scourge of the earth, the destroyer of nations, the king of coups, the sultan of sanctions, the emir of the embargo, the autocrat of austerity, the doge of deregulation, the baron of busting unions, the prince of privatization, the lord of loan sharks, the patron-saint of proxy wars, the sponsor of settlers, the guarantor of genocides, the Divided $nakkkes of Amerikkka

🏈 💵 🌭 🍔

🛠️ Strike Tracker ⚒️
https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

🇺🇸 Deeds of the Burger Reich 🇺🇸
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities.md

📺 Live News 📺
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.
601 posts and 140 image replies omitted.

new thread retards >>2377038

>>2377037
Funny because even the Shah said America was run by jews, even as he was allied with Iran.

>>2376556
>In the modern context, sanctions are supposed to act as a line of defense
Lol dropped

>>2376402
especially a dem, a republican is willing to engage in shittalk and say balls to the wall retarded shit to change the subject while establishment dems only allow themselves to be condescending and smug at most

>>2377037
you might actually get to some radlib types(like the marks that got the palestine ukraine flag combo in there bio) to change there mind if you were to point this out. Even the muh skirts cope is similar to the muh gay in gaza cope.



File: 1745980317048.jpg (85.26 KB, 1600x1600, circle-A-symbol.jpg)

 

what do I think what do I read what do I do please help me become le based anarchist I am clinging onto any identity that makes me feel less like a fat loser
58 posts and 14 image replies omitted.

>>2314063
Read Masanobu Fukuoka, try his farming methods, realize they don't work, move on.

>>2248040
>I am clinging onto any identity that makes me feel less like a fat loser
Starve yourself, bro

unironically read Indian Marxists/Neo Gramscian such as Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Salyan Kanyal. They all have a much better understanding of the state than western Marxists and understanding the limits of the state is key to being an anarchist.


In my experience, anarchists are just liberal friends groups with (always white) people hanging out doing brainrot drugs and/or gardening because they *still* cling to their reactionary peasant worship like >>2314078 mentioned. Shocking amount of religion in it too, though I guess utopianism and religion go hand in hand.

That's not sectarian bullshit either, that's just simply what I see with my own two eyes. I can talk about communist parties being neurotic, sex-pest cults or soc dems (DSA berniecrats and MLs) fighting each other over parties when they all do the same shit.

>I'm looking for an ideology to distract from the fact I'm a fat loser

Yikes



File: 1751856581092.png (545.54 KB, 746x821, ClipboardImage.png)

 

🗽UNITED STATES POLITICS 🦅

<"No Clients List" Edition


Thread for the hellish discussion related to the scourge of the earth, the destroyer of nations, the king of coups, the sultan of sanctions, the emir of the embargo, the autocrat of austerity, the doge of deregulation, the baron of busting unions, the prince of privatization, the lord of loan sharks, the patron-saint of proxy wars, the sponsor of settlers, the guarantor of genocides, the Divided $nakkkes of Amerikkka

🏈 💵 🌭 🍔

🛠️ Strike Tracker ⚒️
https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

🇺🇸 Deeds of the Burger Reich 🇺🇸
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities.md

📺 Live News 📺
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.
621 posts and 165 image replies omitted.

>>2376275
why do imageboard cunts feel the need to announce that they ignored an image or video while also ignoring a post? are you like this at a dinner table? do you wait until the end of a conversation and said "I didn't listen to anything you said. you aren't funny. i am a much better person than you."

antisocial personality disorder is not a personality, wank stain.

>>2376164
MAGAcoms really hate Indians for some reason
They usually try to say that the voiceless white american(white) working(white) man(white) is really talking about the brahmin elite as if americans haven't killed any guy with brown skin and a turban no matter their caste

File: 1751913997318.jpg (69.35 KB, 512x537, wojak-cia-rage2.jpg)

>>2376269
cope, dilate, seethe.

>>2376265
> the only one they managed to remember was 9 fucking 11
the only thing worth to remember about 9/11 is to mock 9/11.

>>2376320
shartybot



 

I don't think there are any actual technocrats here any more, but /leftypol/ was the first place I came across them. I remember there being a few posters on the topic and webm clips from the embedded presentation.

Anyway, I was reminded of it again when I came across this article. It talks about technocracy's historical roots, influences, and the effect its had on the current "techbro" culture. I thought I'd post it here and hopefully get some added insight into it and the ideology guiding silicon valley oligarchs.

We need to escape the Gernsback Continuum
<Outdated science fiction is hobbling our dreams.
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/we-need-to-escape-the-gernsback-continuum?

>As I admitted at the time, my review essay on Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity was a bit of a bait-and-switch. Becker’s book explains how the dreams of science fiction have shaped Silicon Valley’s dreams of technology in general. I deliberately made a comparison that was both narrower and more fantastical: emphasizing how debates over AGI resembled the dreams of Renaissance alchemy. In partial redress, here’s a more specific argument about the relationship between science fiction and Silicon Valley.


>Again, it’s more a riff on Becker than a bald presentation of his argument, but the connections are much clearer, even if it isn’t quite the same argument that Becker makes. What Becker sees as rooted in 1950s and 1960s science fiction arguably goes back a few decades further: to the fusion of “scientifiction” and technocracy that happened in the early 1930s, right at the beginning of the so-called “Golden Age” of science fiction.


>Silicon Valley is trapped in a new version of the Gernsback Continuum - a situation in which it is collectively haunted by the visions of an imaginary future of endless expansion that didn’t happen and never will. Our escape route, as Becker suggests, is to acknowledge the physical and social limits that we can’t escape, and to try to construct better futures within those limits.
16 posts and 3 image replies omitted.

File: 1751786661064.jpg (55.93 KB, 600x480, mpv-shot0023.jpg)

THIS POST WAS MADE BY TECHNOCRACY GANG

>>2373361
I don't think you scenario would hold up. Test scores as a prerequisite for voting rights is a system that can be easily gamed to reduce the participation of specific groups and starting a feedback loop. Furthermore about the scope of your proposal, i don't think tests on every single issue can be controlled as tightly as you imagine they would be, rather this invites many minor instances of corruption.

Conceptually, my favorite solution to the technocracy question is that positions of state may only be held by graduates of a mandarin-esque system, whose standards would need to be ratified by an organ solely representing the people. This means all policymakers would have a basic degree of competence in their field, hopefully without the disproportionate power of bureaucrats inherent in other forms of vetting.

>>2370831
I really don't know much past surface level information. Why did they go away to begin with?

>>2374459
Probably the same reasons everyone else has left

>>2370843
> Kim Stanley Robinson (another poet of hard physical limits)
you mean that soy PMC who soyfaces at Blockchain and Elon Musk doing asteroid mining? riiiight



File: 1751841525822.jpeg (48.96 KB, 579x575, Gu-IIVkWwAAPTU_.jpeg)

 

Hey guys baby Marxist here, I been thinking that maybe uhh communism is good and Christian ever since I read sam kriss, I got some questions though like, I just read the principles of communism and it said it's for the proletariat like Chinese sweatshop workers, why would like Americans want that, semi related I am a pretty autistic guy and I just sit doom scrolling and I'm like petit bourgeois, ye, also is communism affected by the fact poor people are stupid a lot of time, yeah that's kinda reactionary I'm sorry thank you
19 posts and 3 image replies omitted.

>>2375006
Pedophile detected

File: 1751892388414.png (635.85 KB, 1128x1336, 1745773669358476.png)

>>2374885
The practical result of pedophilia fearmongering is to shill for the killing of 18 year olds dating 17 year olds

>>2374724
This thread sucks so here is whats up.
>Hey guys baby Marxist here
Hi.
>communism is good and Christian
Nobody has no idea what communism looks like, the only observations anybody can make is from past Socialist countries, just because a state can be "socialist" does not imply the struggle ends.
>Chinese sweatshop workers, why would like Americans want that
China is not a socialist state, china is state-capitalist, with it's own "attributes", china is enemy to the people in many ways and I don't want to argue with dengists who say otherwise, GTFOOO. but the joke is that America has gone so far the shitter that they'd rather be colonized by the Chinese.
>and I'm like petit bourgeois
There is nothing inherently wrong with being petit bourgeois, as long as you understand that capitalism is showing its flaws you are literally well off, just remember to keep the peoples struggle within you.
>is communism affected by the fact poor people are stupid a lot of time
Education in America and many other western civilizations is aimed at making you dumber, they don't want you being class conscious because that'd go against literally every bit of propoganda the state has put you through, a poor person can be retarded, so can the richest man etc etc. But poor people share something that the bourgs don't, that's sympathy and will, survival. Kill or be killed, revolution.
Revolutions were started by poor people, and such events led to better standards for all.

>>2375804
Wrong. China is Communist. The trabsformation of private property into socialized means of production was completed by 1956. The exploiting class, as a class, was eliminated by 1982. Communist China is friend to all proletarians. China belongs to the proletariat.

>>2375807
> The exploiting class, as a class, was eliminated by 1982



File: 1748291031826.png (19.42 KB, 224x225, ClipboardImage.png)

 

If you 'denounce' the historical real socialism that existed and exists, you can't be a communist.
>but those were not real communism
Real communism is the movement which abolishes the current state of things (private property the alienation of species-being) and it is the expansion of worker association to international terms. To think 'communism' can be reduced to just a single historical act is silly. It is, after all, a process. Real socialism was one such historical act in a chain of many to come.
>okay, they are communist, but they are totalitarian! They are authoritarian!
Those are empty words liberal ideolouges use to justify equating the Soviet anti-colonial socialist project and the Nazifascistic colonial Lebensraum project, to keep the status quo of liberal representative democracy as the 'only democratic nonauthoritarian' society.
>what do you mean the soviet project is an anti-colonial project?
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/may/18.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/may/07b.htm
>I… I didn't know. I'm sorry. I will now study the history of the Soviet Union and build an antiimperialist socialist project on the Marxist-Leninist tradition. I will support the anti-colonial Palestinian people's struggle. I will globalize the intifada.
And you will defend the People's Republics of China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Belarus and the DPRK. You will study Cuban agroecology and you will learn to live with nature. You will have Chinese high speed rails and high quality Belarusian agricultural machinery. You will be happy.

Any questions?
348 posts and 51 image replies omitted.

>>2372350
Gibberish

>>2286180
moralism

>>2371997
internationalism is not antinationalism

>>2372404

Illiterate

>>2371997
A≠B
Malk is not banana
Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.
>>2372117
It's just not, like it's not that good. I get it compensates for something but there is (always) better ways, like solving the problem directly.
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/newsletterissue-state-institutions-global-south/
>We must strengthen our weaknesses.

I get it with liberals, they are fundamentally status-quoists but the so-called ultra? They are ostensibly totally, way deep in opposition. The cognitive dissonance can't be good.



File: 1751831992617.jpg (105.08 KB, 682x1024, UCK soldier.jpg)

 

So, was the USSR State Capitalist, or was it Socialist? Did the Bureaucratic Class in the USSR constitute a new Bourgeoise, or not? What books/articles should I watch to understand this?
21 posts and 4 image replies omitted.

>>2374926
you are Romanian and you read Bordiga?
What the fuck is wrong with you?

>>2374426
It never successfully moved on from the DoTP, as socialism is an inherently international system. They were hoping for revolution in large capitalist centers like Germany, but that didn't happen. Stalin's "socialism in one country" was revisionist cope with that fact.

Lenin never once claimed the USSR achieved socialism, only the opposite.

File: 1751869250463.png (108.76 KB, 934x653, ClipboardImage.png)

>>2374426
According to Richard Kosolapov, former member of the central committee. The USSR was merely in the "transitional period from capitalism to socialism."

>To decipher this self-assessment of the meaning of the necessary transformations, I will have to recall one of the many discussions of 1989 at the Moscow Higher Party School. Its highlight was that Richard Ivanovich Kosolapov took part in it. At that time, I was even boyishly proud that the recent editor-in-chief of Kommunist, unexpectedly removed from this serious post by the new General Secretary, accepted the invitation of our department. In his rather lengthy speech, he touched on many aspects that were actively discussed at the time. I will recall here only one of them:


>"It's time for us to stop floating in some kind of illusory world. We say that we live under socialism, but in reality we live in a transitional period from capitalism to socialism…" And then followed a completely unexpected thesis: "…with the periodic return of certain old and contradictory socio-economic forms."


>The speaker then went on to explain: “Due to the fact that our country had existed for a long time under conditions of formal socialization with the powerful influence of purely administrative methods of managing the economy, it turned out that the bureaucracy imagined itself to be all-powerful. The enormous concentration of surplus product, which was needed to solve major national economic problems, began to be used in part for the needs of the bureaucracy, which signifies a state-capitalist tendency in our development. This negative tendency was superimposed on another in the 1960s and 1970s. The sovburs, who had just accumulated capital at that time, began to yearn for money, since they began to lack power in some way. At the same time, the stagnant bureaucracy, prone to corruption, became bored at the levers of power, since it wanted more comfort. Due to this, in my opinion, a bloc of one layer and another was formed. At the same time, I do not want to cast a shadow on all the managers and, naturally, the workers of the party apparatus, but some of them, undoubtedly, found themselves in the position of people who went against the people and were subjected to
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File: 1751869363211.png (2.25 MB, 1000x1128, ClipboardImage.png)




 

🗽UNITED STATES POLITICS 🦅

<"NYC Landlords" Edition


Thread for the hellish discussion related to the scourge of the earth, the destroyer of nations, the king of coups, the sultan of sanctions, the emir of the embargo, the autocrat of austerity, the doge of deregulation, the baron of busting unions, the prince of privatization, the lord of loan sharks, the patron-saint of proxy wars, the sponsor of settlers, the guarantor of genocides, the Divided $nakkkes of Amerikkka

🏈 💵 🌭 🍔

🛠️ Strike Tracker ⚒️
https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

🇺🇸 Deeds of the Burger Reich 🇺🇸
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities.md

📺 Live News 📺
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.
598 posts and 161 image replies omitted.

>>2374552
>We support all the horrific shit our decaying neoliberal system is doing but only when us TRVE EVROPE ARYAN VOLK are doing it and not DA JOOS AND THE HECKIN MEAN BROWN PPL AND TRANSHUMANISTS.

>>2375353
magaturds got gaslighted about this, lmao.

>>2375357
meanwhile the BRICS are pushing hard to a new currency system to bypass sanctions. nice.

so from browsing around here and reddit, liberals and centrists are cheering on red state people being killed off in natural disasters because they're all fascist yokel shitstains, socdems and hasanite moderate socialists are calling the liberals bloodthirsty for cheering on the deaths and saying not every red state american is complicit, and then extreme ultras and third worldists swing back around to agreement with the liberals with cheering on the deaths of the american reactionaries

>>2376214
All I can say is they got what they voted for. Cops can't shoot the water away.



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