/lit/ thread

Goddamn, you people really never leave your echo chambers do you?

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Imperialism in the 21st Century by John Smith. Very good so far.

Because communism will win. There are no genders. Class society is the worst. There are no peaceful ideologies. No one was nor will ever be "my" president, only that of the bourgeoisie.

Just his writing style not his ideas.

NO GODS

NO MASTERS

MEANS NO IDOLS

I'm reading a book on the Punic Wars. It was originally a guy's master dissertation, he mostly analises Polybius works and what was his perceptions on the matter. After that I might read what an Argentinian trot wrote on the depressions of 1873/1896 and 1929/1939, or Oskar Negt talking about the crisis in Marxism.
Finally got Stirner meme book, but it is going to take a while to get to him.

I'm reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. In the preceding chapters, he's called communism a religion and capitalism vital to European development and domination. I'm about to start the chapter on Capitalism, so I'm preparing to put my critique of ideology glasses on.

So I'm reading Murder in Samarkand, by the former UK ambassador Craig Murray.

It's easy to read, and yet I feel the need to take breaks between major revelations. The information is quite frankly horrifying. The Uzbek regime is horrifying. They almost make 1984's Ingsoc seem tasteful, for fuck's sake. Yet they get a thumbs up from the CIA.

What the fuck is wrong with this world.

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Do you guys want to make a Goodreads reading group? I could create one, but I want to know the general level of interest.

down 100%

Is there no honest alternative?

My concern is getting people to stick with the group. That's why i think reading groups are beneficial. Goodreads I think can be motivational to do more reading… allows you to track your progress. It's in one central location so people don't have to follow a new thread every week.

Idk if there's an alternative site.

*My concern is getting people to stick with the *reading*

goodreads.com/group/show/207317-leftypol-s-books-for-the-bunker

I created a Goodreads group if you guys are interested. I'll add some stuff later. pls join

There is no good quality leftist literature.

This is because there is no good quality political literature.

The closest you get is literature that happens to (regrettably) deal with politics, and is good for its other elements – or that deals with politics only slyly, like Don Quixote.

Don Quixote is one of the best leftist works out there, btw.

you are a pretentious cunt

this
vvvv

joined

Check my flag.

Have you read the Society of the Spectacle though?

I'm only talking about fiction.

Leftist non-fiction can be good.

In the eternal vein of capitalism, the CIA/USA doesn't care who it outsources its brutality to so long as the money keeps flowing.

Reading Bookchin's Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism at the moment. Have Stirnerposters been eternally BTFO?

No.

I'm pretty sure Bookchin pretty much BTFO'd himself with that book.

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He's calling capitalism a religion and is doing some woke analysis of the way capitalism functions, so I think it's all good

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/12/21/best-books-of-2016/

link related

I made a thread for the goodreads page: 8ch.net/leftypol/res/1184166.html

If it comes down to it and no one else is interested feel free to post books you recommend on the shelves. I want to read good theory next year.

Stirnerposters do suck though.

Isn't Bob Black kind of a primitivist?

No, he's just edgy.

And a snitch.

Reading pic related rn

The only destruction Bob Black has ever put on display is that of his own asshole.

being BTFO is a spook obv

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this is a great mighty book, even despite not being very leftist.

DELET THIS

DELET THIS

DELET THIS

All right lads, I finished Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism. Some thoughts:

I don't think Bookchin's critique of individualist anarchism is very good. He associates it wth the petit bourgeoisie (the go-to insult by leftists for leftists) on the grounds that individual anarchism is often expressed through a bohemian lifestyle but I don't think that makes it inherently petit bourgeois. He also suggests that individualist/lifestyle anarchism is idealist, although I'm very skeptical of this (at least when it comes to Stirnerist individualism). Overall this part just doesn't jive with me.

His critiques of post-leftism, primitivism and related trends are a lot better, in my opinion. He pretty brutally dismantles primitivism as anti-scientific woo. However, he relies a lot on contemporary anthropological sources, so I'd need to do more research on 21st century anthropology to see if the sources he relies on have become outdated. At times he swings too far to the other side; he touts reason without ever really justifying it, and you can already see the (in my opinion unjustified) love he has for cities. Nevertheless, as an anti-primmie polemic it's pretty good; I'll definitely check out though.

At the end he links primitivism to fascism on the basis of a shared origin in 19th century German romanticism, which seems like a stretch, but I do think he's onto something there, at least insofar as both primitivism and fascism are both very idealist and place an emphasis on the human spirit being held back by society (which, to be fair, is also a pretty important part of most leftist thought; again, roots in 19th century German thought). The difference, of course, is that fascism blames modern society while fascism blames civilization itself.

I'm enjoying it so far fam. Seems to be rather balanced.

I read the introduction to pic related and am about to head into the first chapter.

The introduction is about what allowed Hitler to gain power and first thing is that Weimar was a class compromise state where the idea of liberal democracy was supposed to win over bolshevism, most fatally of all, it allowed social-democrats to do their thing such as not offering workers and the middle class any real alternative to inflation and the ruined economy, not fighting against the industrial cartels and capital accumulation's screwing of the workers because they had some brilliant rationalizers(much like the KPD ) that argued capitalism was just having its inevitable developments and that they would be heirs to whatever emerged from it without having to do much of anything.
There were also some other problems they could do little to fight against like the judiciary and the army being bastions of reaction and right-wingers(leftist conspirators got exemplary sentences while Hitler got off with a slap on the wrist for a crime he should have been deported over at the very least) But it was their political maneuvers of always siding with "moderate" right-wingers and compromising in hope of stopping the nazis that did them in. In the end they were a traitorous party that was socialist only in name and that would never have sided with the communists because doing it would mean losing the state apparatus they had be linked with since its formation.
That is the legacy of socdems all over the world.

Franz starts off the first chapter by saying that is useless to read nazi texts because they are extremely ugly, badly written and with no internal consistency, the only hope of understanding it is looking at what it did in practice.

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well this sounds like an objective scholar to me

He is a marxist but have you tried to read mein kampf? Shit is ugly.

So I was listening to the audiobook version of Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years and am coming across a lot of good lines that would probably be worthwhile isolating. For our purposes and the purpose of disseminating spreading the information, would it be worthwhile to use textual format or use the clips of audio? I've always found the snippet webms of stuff like Kapital 101 to be incredibly helpful and lower barrier of entry than actually reading all the content of them, but I have no real video editing skills to accompany it with good visuals.

This. Hitler may have been a proficient orator, but he was a TERRIBLE writer.

That entire reprint series is pretty dope

I have Mutual Aid and My Disillusionment in Russia from it

Aside from Society of the Spectacle, are there any other works from the Situationalists that Holla Forums would recommend?

Been Chomsky bingeing lately. Almost through What We Say Goes. It's pretty good. Plan on finally getting around to Hegemony or Survival after that.

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle is a must, The Revolution of Everyday Life is recommended (the online versions seem to be full of OCR errors though), and Situationist International Anthology if you really like them.

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This thread should have everything you need:
>>>/freedu/1156

bampo

Good book, but i have the feeling that his strawmaning of Marxists is self aware attempt at humor

yeb yeb the only meh thing about it is the anarchist "theory" tbh famlam
:^}

Anyone got a good source of leftist audiobooks? I'm probably going to be stuck doing a fair bit of long-distance driving the next few days and would like to at least listen to theory if I can't find the time to read it.

Search around on here librivox.org/search?title=&author=marx&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=alpha&search_page=1&search_form=advanced
They're read "by volunteers" so the quality may be more Chapo Trap House than Morgan Freeman, but it's more forthcoming than, say, the pirate bay or kickass torrents.
Best wishes for your trip, user

heh

The Holla Forums reading group has started nigs

goodreads.com/group/show/207317-leftypol-s-books-for-the-bunker

Debt the first 5000 year By David Graeber

Join the group and start getting that theory famrades.

Nice

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little materialist? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class at the University of Tübingen, and I've been involved in some serious ontology. I am trained in dialectical warfare and I am the top dialectician of all German philosphers. I will wipe you the fuck out with some serious post-Kantian idealism, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of Hegelian sorcerers across the world and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, caveman. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can destroy your entire philosophical system in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in the ancient philosophy of the Greeks, but I have access to the entire arsenal of German Idealism and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

Cool

Pics related are what I'm reading rn. Aesop is /comfy/ and Capital really isn't that difficult, just long. David Harvey's Youtube series helps.

I used to think this was a meme but I'm glad I finally read it a couple months ago.

He wrote some essays that are fairly accessible. I attached one for you comrade.

Will check out the goodreads reading group, thanks comrade.

There's another one on reddit, a nice thing about reddit is that threads/comments are persistent

Humain trop Humain of Nietzsche. I really like his style

Great history book tbh i stopped reading it for the Debt group reading but will comeback to it in a week or 2

It makes the clime that markets = capitalism very very weak

ew

bump