Daily Theory Thread

I'll be spending the next 3 months reading Freud and other psychoanalysts like Lacan.

Althusser's reading of Rousseau: he a shit. When it comes to (proto-) materialism, Macchiavelli is lord.

gob bleps

I just finished the Bhagavad Gita. I found that apart from a few ideas like mastery of the self it was philosophically kinda weak, since most of it was justified in religious terms and wouldn't hold up to scrutain't. That being said it was an incredibly moving work of poetry and was still very thought provoking.

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It's really good so far, I've just finished the first section. I would post epub/pdf but I got a physical copy

Terrorism and Communism has gripped me right now, and over summer I'm gonna break into philosophy a bit.

m8 The society of the Spectacle is some of the dankest theory going. What the hell are you talking about

Out of interest, have you checked out any of the Buddhist Pali canon? There are some interesting concepts there, along with more rigorous philosophic discourse in the Abhidamma (about which there's a pretty good article on SEP).

You have already read all the classics?

that's because it isn't supposed to be a "philosophy" book. It's pre-philosophy.

However, it possesses elements and the spirit that would be developed in India's thought.

It's really a work of myth, poetry, etc.
If you're a lit fag, you should of course read it.

Well I wasn't expecting it to be something like Republic or Politics, but I knew it laid out the basis for more robust works of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy.

Unfortunately no, I'm woefully unfamiliar with Eastern literature. I'm planning on moving on to the Tao Te Ching next, and eventually to Confucius.

You made me realize I missed some of them so o.

a couple things: first you didn't know that, because you hadn't read those texts nor taken a class or read a journal article that proposed that. you had a justified (though untrue) belief that that was the case. So for starters very shitty epistemological reasoning

Second, the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavad gita are the major religious epics and poems. However, the Vedas, Upanishads and subsequent Brahma Sutras are the basis for Hindu philosophy and in turn some of Buddhist philosophy.

The basis for Buddhist philosophy is from Advaita Vedanta and from the Nikayas. Which are not at all hinted at in most of the Hindu literature.

Sorry, i'm a sperg about these kinds of things. I've been interested for a long time in Eastern philosophy. But, just one epic text does not constitute a proper picture of Hindu philosophy. It discusses Dharma in detail and does reference the Vedas extensively but is not in itself an accurate picture. Reading the Upanishads and Vedas along with the Brahmasutras is the only way to really know hindu philosophy. And the Nikayas are required reading for understanding Buddhism. This is like reading the Communist Manifesto or some book about the Bolsheviks and thinking you know about Communist theory.

Anyways good luck with your studies cat poster, hopefully you'll figure out how causality works eventually and we can revisit our intelligence/heredity argument

read thiw

what's the sep?

don't read pali cannon trash. go to mahayana preferably vajrayana or chan buddhism. theravada is for bug people and nerds and atheists. Its not a real spiritual tradition and its only practiced by authoritarian nations with huge pedo monk populations. Vajrayana and Chan are based

Yes, of course you should. Never take criticisms of anarchists from Marxists without a grain fistful of salt - they're almost certain to be rife with hundreds-of-years-old strawmen which went from secondhand sources to thirdhand sources, etc., until you get ridiculous bullshit like "anarchists are against all organization" and "Bakunin was an idealist".

Just finished "Difference And Repetition", am planning to start one of the volumes of "Capitalism And Schizophrenia". From what I've read about them, "A Thousand Plateaus" might actually be more relevant to accelerationism and simultaneously closer to the critique of everything which defined classical Marxian communism (contrary to how Marxists supposedly prefer "Anti-Oedipus" usually). Should I start with "Anti-Oedipus" because it comes first?

An American Trot party.

what u thunk bout the bureocracy part?

Nothing is pre-philosophy.

Deleuze is trash on the psyche. Suit yourself with post-materialist non-restricted creativity, you idealist foo.

Wrong

Nice argument kiddo

a pdf is in the zizekcore thread

Keep dreaming, bucko.

t. unashamed euro-centrist

yeah except for the fact that this is just bullshit and there are literally thousands of ways of being and thinking that don't relate with phillosophy and formal logic. Chan is one of them, and you won't find any philosophy or formal logic in Chan. In fact the more you use formal logic, dialectics or analysis the less you understand Chan and the less Chan you are capable of. Eat shit continental fag no one believes in dialectics

its rhetoric. You're wrong, you have bad taste and your ideology is tacky and uninteresting. Aesthetics>>>>>>>>>formal logic

Revisionist
Double revisionist and polluted with Tibetan Bon folklore.

Also OP I am currently reading Das Kapital. Holy fuck is that book dense. Its really good though and I'm glad I'm finally getting around to reading it.

sage for double post

After lenin comes gramsci. U need a marxist that know develoled states (unlike russia)

watch the video
youtu.be/gJ1ZM01oroU

Nah. I wanna get through lenin and then read Luxemburg and pannakoeks critiques of him before I move on to Gramsci. I still need to go through imperialism and what is to be done. Still have to much one my reading list before I have time to get into that guy.

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Too much for the time I have with exams coming tbh but
Hegel
Metaphysics
Marx and Engels
Lenin
Anarcho-Communism (and in extent all sorts of anarchy)
World politics
And political philosophy

Bruno Latour
Marxist sociology
Labour studies ethnography

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I'm reading basic Marxist and anarchist texts to really solidify any talking/conversations points when interacting with others about politics.

Currently reading Capital and rereading the Critique of Pure Reason so I can be ready for tackling Hegel next month. I probably should read Hegel before Marx, but Capital is just so fucking interesting I can't stop.

After Capital and Phenomenology of Spirit, I'm gonna read the Science of Logic. Then probably the Conquest of Bread. Some Althusser after.

Read pic related if you can find it. When I did my Master's this was the main text we drew from for the larger branches of Indian philosophy.

Who here smart enough to read fredric jameson, b honest lol

Like it or not, accelerationism (which is itself fundamentally DeLeuzeian) has some legitimate points to make and must be confronted and destroyed or integrated.

Thomas More doesn't have anything nice to say about capitalism and I fukkin love it

r u me

iirc at some point he talks about some riots in California and incidents between Korean shop owners and black people, and how a simplistic class interpretation of it was wrong.
can anyone explain his point?

I saw that video a couple of weeks ago, and while Bookchin was right to say Debord was a bully and a dick, because he certainly was one, he doesn't really disprove his theory in itself.
His concept of spectacle is pretty good to understand our contemporary society IMO.

Let's take Trump as an example of the spectacle, or more particularly the these #54 :
The demonstrated division was in the case of Trump was its battle with Clinton, the fight between Democrats and the Republicans, liberals vs. conservatives, but in the end, both of them agreed to become the temporary pawns of neoliberalism, the servants of the bourgeoisie who is truly in power. All his dodgy and divisive electoral promises vanished as soon as he entered in the White House.
Debord also saw the USA and the USSR as sides of the same coin. While in the Western bloc (diffuse spectacle), people could choose between a big array of commodities to buy in a more or less free market, and in the Eastern one (concentrated spectacle), the choice of which commodities could be available was being made by the authoritarian bureaucracy in power, in the end, both sides in the Cold War had a class which was an intermediary between the proletariat and the fruits of its labor.

His thoughts on urbanism, which originated from the work of Henri Lefebvre, are also interesting because he posits that cities are constantly rearranged for the sake of maximizing capitalist profits, and said like this, it seems pretty logical, but it raises some questions too, like : is Venice still worth visiting nowadays ? Has the city been destroyed for the sake of tourism, to make it appealing to the endless and unsatisfiable expectations of consumers the spectacle always generate ? Is there still some genuine history to be found there, or only a spectacular display of previously authentic things that existed in this city, before capitalism transformed the visit of a historical site into a commodity ?

A last illustration of his theory :
Pop punk is a good example of that. Instead of rebelling for real as a teenager, you would rather listen to some Sum 41 or Blink 182, or even better, see them live at a festival sponsored by a brand of skateshoes which is basically designed to sell you commodities. And even rebellion itself actually, in that case, become a commodity, through the consumption of a cultural product, as you buy a concert ticket or a CD but thanks God for Soulseek.

And everything in this framework is designed to keep you frustrated, to make you consume endlessly, according to Debord.

His prose was probably needlessly obfuscated and he didn't have any serious solutions, like Bookchin said, except a half-assed rehearsal of Pannekoek's council communism from I've gathered, but he also wrote an interesting critique of contemporary capitalism, and he was a good bridge between avant-garde art and left politics for someone like me.

I'm on page 60 so like 10% of The Ego and his Own. Not gonna lie most of the time I have no idea what the fuck he's trying to say but I think Egoism will cure my depression. Should I carry on?

If you are the "self imporvment, myself is more important than community" type, yes.

If you're like me.. naaah.

Fell for the Freud meme, Bernays is satisfied

Absolutely

You're missing out if you don't read it to completion. It isn't just about me me me like the memers like to pretend. The union of egoists is a community, in fact it's probably more of a community than the one you're fantasising of.

I gifted it to a friend who is more about the whole egoism thing. He'll do more good to him. I'm too deep in ideology.

aerodynamics
physics
advance electronics (digital)

thats about it

oh and a bit of economics for my work.

I have so damn much in my plate that I don't know where to start. The usual Marxist fare, which is fucking immense; its many variants; the non-Marxist experiments; a lot of history and biography books of leftism; the details of the economies of gommie countries and proposed alternatives; and cybernetics. To say nothing of non-political literature.

Anyone else into Giorgio Agamben here?

I read Agamben's tiny book on the state of emergency a decade ago. Here is 95 % of its content:
>A ruler that has more power during a state of emergency than during the normal state of affairs and who can decide when the state of emergency is actually has this expanded state-of-emergency power the whole time. If force is used rarely, that doesn't prove a society is relatively free, since the expectation of that force in cae of insubordination already influences how people act.
He made some references to Carl Schmitt and ancient Rome, and that was it. Verdict: meh.

Homo Sacer is his best book . Schmitt is also worth reading despite the fact he's associated with the 3rd reich, one of the most literate and insightful theorists out there imo.

That's Weaselese for: He joined the Nazi party and was a Nazi for years with a high rank in Nazi society, espousing Nazi ideology. As with Heidegger.
Liberal surprised and fascinated by existence of non-liberal thought, turns into drooling Nazi admirer. Once you have inhaled enough Schmitt and Heidegger, you can level up and check out Shadow the Hedgehog.

what would you recommend I read then, oh wise one?

lmfao

tis what I talk bout

I just finished reading a buncho leftcom and I'm pretty sold on it, where I didn't even consider it a few months ago, I feel like I can cool off on philosophy for a while now because I fit right in there..
Gonna finish up eclipse this week. Honestly I'm just devoting a lot of time to more practical things that Ive neglected in the past like mathematics and learning the ins and outs of GNU/Linux. I think the way forward is going to involve ad hoc networking, crypto, and im really sold on cybernetics.

Readin dis bad boy here.

Have you read your SotS today?

Plato's earlier works. Proto-despooking.

Delving into Mark Fisher's work. Just about halfway through Capitalist Realism.

David Harvey. Das Kapital has been gazing at me fr from the bookcase for a while now.

Reading this bad boy on a train rn

I wanted to read The Coming Community, but I gave up because it was full of references to people and concepts I am not familiar with.

Is there something, anything, I can read on cynicism? To my knowledge Diogenes didn't write any books, we just have dodgy accounts of his life and a few famous quips that explain his philosophy. I've read the explanations on what cynicism is, but are there actually any books written by cynics? also are there any modern day cynics that teach about cynicism in modern life?

Did Diogenes write anything down at all?

Fourier, Owen and Saint Simon

yo, does anyone have any tips on reading up unironically into Situtationists? I was gonna cop an anthology on amazon, but if there's' something else i need would be appreciated to know

Das Kapital Volume II (REPETITIVE af, but very important because it talks about the circulation sphere) and Capitalism Realism

Check out >>>/freedu/1156

Imbeciles Guide to the Spectacle and Spectacular Times are good intros.

If you are talking about the anthology by Ken Knabb, it's very nice but you should also read at least The Society of the Spectacle and The Revolution of Everyday Life, preferably before the texts of issue #12 in the anthology.

my mane. Have you been checking out Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project? that's were I found out about Fourier.

Is the Society of Spectale book worth reading if I've already see the movie?

Without starting a shit storm on Bookchin, which books contain his more controversial writings? I'm on chapter 4 on Ecology of Freedom and he hasn't really said anything controversial so far imo.

Capital vol 1
Defense of Lost Causes
New Stirner translation

did somebody say…. cockshott?

stop forcing this shit pls

Better than forcing Bookchin, honestly.

Post pdf pls

eyy can someone link me that text about the situation in china, called some thing like "the lost generation". The cover was a group of men in china with white masks.
I cant find it.

Not that guy, but I was talking a bit about phalansteries in another topic. You're more knowledgeable about this, did I talk out of my ass?

chuangcn.org/journal/one/

Also forgot to ask, what the hell is that in the lower right corner?

It's a great journal. Wonderful to know the Chinese left lives.

thanks

Its pretty good so far and has a sequel called the dream of enlightenment about enlightenment era philosopher. I would recommend for anyone that doesn't have a strong basis in Philosophy, but doesn't want to spend time reading dozens of different dense writings in archaic language.

Debt is good but a bit repetitive at times. Its really started to pick up near the end.

I think I'm going to read this again, it's just so good. Thanks to whoever posted it originally here.

i have such a difficult time reading, i get bored so quickly and my attention is fucked

i havent read any books in years

all i do is masturbate and sleep

i wish i didnt find everything boring

Pretty much anything is better than Bookchin.

delete this

Why did the creator of that image think that "original teletyper" is more timely for 1666 than "original poster?"

Diogenes did write some books but none are extant today, nor are there really any other original extant Cynic works. The closest you'll get to original Cynic works is by reading Stoic works, the Stoics being their normie successors. Epictetus liked him a lot so maybe you can get some glimpses of Cynic thinking from him.

Here's a couple books about Cynicism and Diogenes recommended to me, along with the Encheiridion, a condense and pretty good introduction to Epictetus and Stoicism in general.

I'm watching the 4th season of black sails. It's not a very good source for praxis, but the series has a underlying theme showing the dangers of charismatic leaders in direct democracy.
I also have leviathan on the bedside, twice renewed from my local library, wondering if it's worth the effort.

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Read A General History of Pyrates

It's pretty dead though, and probably some files are missing.

I'm relatively light on theory and I want to start a Marxist study group at my school. What should I be reading?

wage labour and capital

The origins of family, private property and the state

bump

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it's a meme you've been tricked

Reading more of the anarchist side of communization theory (Invisible Committee, SIC, Blaumachen) now just to see if post-'68 ultra-leftism finally associated the term anarchism to something worthwhile.

ayy

Im reading The Coming Insurrection atm and its poetic as fuck. Its also really weird and interesting. Not sure I agree with them but nonetheless, interesting stuff. Is To Our Friends worth reading?

I hear a lot of people say To Our Friends is actually an improvement on The Coming Insurrection but I've never read. Still one of my favorite pieces of theory even though I disagree with some of its conclusions now

what are these?

Already presently surprised.

To Our Friends is the first narcho side and IC communization text I read and it was quite good.

Are you okay?

blaumachen.gr/category/in-english/
sicjournal.org/issue-2-2/ (SIC actually isn't really the anarchist side necessarily but isn't one of the more explicitly Marxist communization theory journals like TC, SoB, Troploin, etc.)

Are you guys reading every day?

Right now i am trying to into Rousseau

yes at least 25-40 pages a day no exceptions, cannot allow cognitive capital to rot away

Yes. Time is short and knowledge a must.

About to finish the first part of ABC of Communism by Bukharin. The inspiration he writes in both encouraging and depressing at the same time. Two great passages at the end of Chapter III:

great historical significance of the proletariat. The proletariat may suffer defeat in one battle, or even in one country, but their victory is certain, just as the downfall of the bourgeoisie is inevitable.

no
work takes up too much of my time and when im home im too worn out to really concentrate on anything and just want to sleep.

pornography
nationalism
sociology?

Does anyone have that book that's written by a Commie, which claims that Marx's theory of value isn't well suited to today's world? It has a picture of a wall or something on the cover. It may have "labour" in the title. Would be great if someone could tell what book this is from my vague description.

And is there any good background reading I should do for Society of the Spectacle?

the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

what does this even mean

This is rubbish, and there are plenty of fine Theravada scholar monks, both Western and native

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Definitely underapriciated

Same.
I could read at work… ..but lack of sleep only lets me use leftypol and so on.

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what aboyt Adorno made you feel inadequate?

"Conversations with Zizek" by Glyn Daly
I've had to skip some parts that were really heavy on philosophy, but I'm starting to atleast understand psychoanalytic lingo (big other and such) bit by bit.

didn't Bob Black plagiarize his stuff?

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

Thanks user! Here have this, a collection of poetry and essays, it's comfy as fuck.

Novatore is underrated

Good post, cheers for this.

An actual nuanced opinion?! How terrifying!

That book is awesome! I have it at home

I don't have a scanner unfortunately :(

Who put out the new translation? I couldn't find anything on google.

These dudes are savages.

I'm actually doing some leisure reading. Never have time for that between college, work and lefty literature. It feels very refreshing.

Feral "Fat Fuck" Faun
theuniqueanditsproperty.com/

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Is Historical Capitalism good? I tried finding reviews of it but everyone is whining that it's too marxist.

Not letting this die to bad threads

Just going to start with "Towards a New socialism", any recommendations before starting?

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Read something better

I've been listening to a lot of :
Brokencyde
Blood on the dance floor
Dot Dot Curve
Falling in reverse
Jeffree Star

So far the lyrics that I find most profound are from the song "get crunk" by Brokencyde

Lets Go!

If you're down motha fucka then throw your hands up
Get loose in the club we're gonna tear the party up
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!

If you're down motha fucka then throw your hands up
Get loose in the club we're gonna tear the party up
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk!

If you ain't a down motha fucka then go back home
Get crunk up in the club poppin bottles of patron
Get drunk!
Get drunk!
Get drunk!
Get drunk!
Get drunk!
Get drunk!

Sippin bottles of patron

Get loose get laid, fuckin bitches' everyday
Bc13 and you know where here to stay
These hoes x2 are always blowing up my phone
When I walk up in the club yall people know now I'm in the zone

Like now!
Poppin 40's in the club like blaooow!
Poppin Cristal bottles up right like oooooh!
Get Crunk in the party right now
Let's go!

Like now!
Poppin 40's in the club like blaooow!
Poppin Cristal bottles up right like oooooh!
Get Crunk in the party right now
Let's go!

If you're down motha fucka then throw your hands up
Get loose in the club we're gonna tear the party up
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!
Get Crunk! Get Crunk!

If you're down motha fucka then throw your hands up
Get loose in the club were gonna tear the party up

But i'm really interested in the implemmentation of computer networks for crating a succesful socilaist planned economy.
Why is it bad? What book would you Recommend on the topic?

I was just memeing sorry

Trump is a nazi

read it, it's good and will give you a basic understanding of cybernetic planning

About to start Madness and Civilization.

Nice. Is it any good?

libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=77C3563FD5983EE1A4F33D2B5192A775

This little book by Althusser which I hope will make reading him later easier. It's in Spanish, but it seems that it just came out in English too.

Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, because of a combination of Doug continuously shilling for it on Zero Books, Varn also endorsing it on a Sectarian Review episode and the fact that the author in part likely offed himself because of the cancer that is contemporary left politics which all combined pushed me to check it out. It's surprising how good it actually is.

Looking at it this way I honestly think his concept of "capitalist realism" isn't new at all and is not too dissimilar from Marx's notion of false consciousness. However the various examples like this one he uses to show how this expresseses itself and where it comes from are definitely interesting.

I've long insisted that false consciousness was too simple of a theory coming from Marx to explain why man can't directly relate to his conditions of existence and see how he reproduces them, and though I recently discovered more and refined my understanding of Marx and his elaborations on the inhumanity and impersonality of these conditions which made it more coherent, I was really hoping Fisher could provide something more or new, which is where I'm disappointed.

just finished First As Tragedy Then As Farce by Zizek and started this. First As Tragedy was very good, just short of 200 pages and easily comprehensible with a basic knowledge of philosophy, which was a surprise coming from Mr Sniff.

Not sure how I feel about this General Intellects book. only 20 pages in so too way too early to say but im a slow reader and hate wasting time on shit books, anyone else familiar with it?

dunno why people complain about the sniff man. i have a wikipedia tier knowledge of philosophy and i think he explains himself wonderfully. i just understand what he means at least eight times out of ten. i'm pretty sure it's no accident either.

Well I normally understand what he means but im not sure why he means it and how it connects to the rest of what hes saying, if that makes sense. And a Wikipedia tier understanding of philosophy doesnt mean a bad understanding necessarily

I don't know about this book but Wark is a hack who constantly pushes his shitty second situationist international line