/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>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

>>2373911
Alcohol is decadence unbecoming of a worker

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

>>2373920
you're retarded

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

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.

>>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.

>>2248040
there's only one real source: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html

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

>>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

>>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

>>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

>>2375006
Pedophile detected

>>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.

>>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.

>>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.

>>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 Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>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.