Leftypol book club

This is the main reason I said that the mods should pin this because I really like this idea, but I don't want the bookclub to completely fall apart which I think will be inevitable if they don't.

I'm going to make a poll from the suggestions tomorrow, that's why I'm using the trip code.
I see the point in not picking a widely read book, but I'm not going to do any editing of the list, aside from removing pol/troll/bait suggestions.
For good or bad, the people will decide.

With no more than 180 pages IIRC, these two books are good reads two.

1: on pedagogy and learning by oneself (universal method)
2: a decent base on what constitutes materialism, historical materialism, dialectical materialism in contrast with idealism, very easy to read and concise

I wouldn't read Marx/Engels, the people who regularly read theory have read Marx and Engles anyway, and there's tons of material about their stuff online as well, so I don't see the need to read it in a group. An exception might be vol 2/3 of Capital and a bit more dense texts like German Ideology.

Also I would go for something more contemporary, because it might facilitate discussion a bit more as it's not mindless rehashing of theory that has been discussed hundreds of times.

Also no introductory texts, it would only exclude the regular readers.

My suggestion is Planet of Slums by Mike Davis, a survey and analysis of slums and the challenges that come with it. Ive skimmed some chapters of it already and there is an interesting chapter on what he calls "Surplus humanity", basically people that are of no use in the economy and thus get their money as workers in extremely inefficient micro-businesses (e.g. "self-employed" shoeshiners). Another interesting thing is the development of the informal sector, i.e. an economy entirely outside the boundaries of regulations etc.. I think it's interesting to look at these phenomena with a leftist/Marxist perspective, and, potentially, a lot to learn.

It's 200 pages, maybe we can focus on certain chapters if needed.

I "suggest reform or revolution" by Rosa Luxemburg, or maybe State and revolution" by Lenin

Hmm, you're probably right. I think the Ignorant Schoolmaster text is not explicitly theoretical and is also inspirational to read, but texts like you suggest are worthy too.

well we read Debt and then nobody discussed it, i think a dicord is a good idea FYI keeps everyone together in one place and you don't forget about it cos everyone uses discord anyway

Weren't you guys going to read Scorpion & Felix?

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Someone on /lit/ has been making posts of a reading club for Capital if you guys want to join that. Only a few people there said they were interested.

I did. It was to incomplete to be interesting. Takes maybe 20 minutes to read if you want to.

We should create a poll for what to read and mods should pin the thread of the first book

Casual reminder that there is a discord that is having a reading group RIGHT now (we are currently reading The sociology of Marx by Henri Lefebvre)
discord.gg/HAMRAvK

made the poll
here it is
strawpoll.me/13195805

About twenty hours should be enough to let all time zones have their say.
So, I'll see you tomorrow.

We can talk here. I won't use discord.

I wanted to approve Rosa and Marx, but apparantly I can only approve one proposal, so I picked Rosa. The site didn't process my vote even after enabling cookies. And who is aques? Sounds like a name from rance.

I know that book, it is very good. Is this the gay ass Holla Forums Discord that always gets shilled here? I joined that one briefly but it was led by this literal autist Snow and was full of trapfaggotry and old, unfunny memes.

No, TLI departed from the unofficial Holla Forums. We felt that the old server's policies were ineffective and practically made it a Holla Forums shitposting haven. The intention of TLI was to have a server primarily for learning and discussion, not for shitposting.

And yeah, we don't have the same admin staff.

Ok, I'll check it out later today then.

inb4 dead server

them are the rules

weird, I haven't enabled the "cookie duplication checker". I used the one based on IP
Looks like someone, voted for Rosa. Maybe U? Change proxy and you should be able to vote for marx to.
It is.

Holla Forums is completely unsuited for a task like this. Any interesting posts get lost to time and you can't engage posters after some time passed by on previous posts anymore. Discord is a meme platform but it fits this purpose very well I say.

still, we will try.
others are welcome to make a discord, but I'm probably not going to join it.

I am going to be reading and explaining Debord's détournements this afternoon (shooting starting at 2-4 PM EST) with a few others if you are still interested.

Can I get an invite to this?

Where can we find the materiall you shot?

go to this Discord server

Here: discord.gg/HAMRAvK

(We are reading it right now)

Where?

...

I'm not going to use discord :(

Just use an IRC chat or something. Don't use Discord, ever. And why are there so many tripfags in here? Mods, please ban everyone in this thread for being cancerous faggots.

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Time is up, the polls are now closed. Winner by popular vote is; Guy Debord,The Society of the Spectacle.

There are a number of English translations of this book. I don't know which of the translations is the better one, but this I believe is the first one library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4
translated by Perlman in 1977

here is the one by Knabb rebels-library.org/files/society_of_the_spectacle.pdf

and her is one by Donald
Nicholson­
Smith antiworld.se/project/references/texts/The_Society _Of _The _Spectacle.pdf

If someone has a pdf of the Pearlman version I'd be interested.

additional resources

society of the spectacle - the movie
youtube.com/watch?v=IaHMgToJIjA

a list of notes on the society of the spectacle by Knabb
libcom.org/library/notes-society-spectacle-ken-knabb

It would also be useful if those that intend to read the book leave a little "I do", to get an estimate of how many are going to partake in this little experiment.
The poll got only ten votes total, and four of them where for society of the spectacle, so expectations are low, but we need at least three people to call it a book club.

The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon by Albert Sobeoul - a Marxist historian.

how long should we read it buy? Lets set a date

GoldenGirls was a horrific fucking show that did nothing but push lifestylism baby boomer capitalist dick sucking Florida country club culture, and was a true testament to how bad 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧television🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 really is for you.

I do

Fuck you, I like it :)

I bet you don't like The Nanny either.

Hope this goes better than the goodreads group did.

I'd really like to recommend Utopia. It's not too long, and while I don't know if I'd color it as 'leftist' it definitely takes a stand against private property.

Does the 25th sound reasonable?

That makes three people, excellent, book club officially established.

The whole book by the 25th?

I just signed up on the discord also.

No? A bit longer then.
The 30th? Or maybe the 5th?

I set a short time limit because, the book is pretty short, but it's also know to be a bit difficult to read, so I agree that perhaps 8 days is to short. A longer time table also allows people who join later to catch up.

No it's perfectly okay I can read it by that

Just joined that and started the debt book. bretty good tbh.

It's a shame that it died. 56 users is pretty good.

Drunken bump.

Lets all read Spengler's 'Decline of the West' and Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulations' I think this board needs to read something different for a change. Or we could all read 'Industrial Society and Its Future'

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

have been meaning to read this for a while, maybe it could be the next book.

bamp

what translation are you guise reading?

ok so have the book read by the 25th to join?

muh nig

yes, that's the plan.

Knabb

Which book it is now?

society of the spectacle see and

...

daily bump.

I'm also reading Knabb.

Was the time limit sufficient? Haven't finished it myself, but will probably be done tomorrow.

it's the 25th right?

Can you join the discussion if you read the book some time ago? I don't remember everything but have a pretty good grasp on situationist thought. Also will the discussion be held ITT?

Yes.

That's today!

At the moment I'm reading Ecce Homo
I can't tell if Nietzsche is really dumb or if I am

...

Indeed it is!

So what do you guys think, enjoy your read?
I thought it was a really interesting book, and he's definitely able to articulate a description of the spectacle that reflects real attributes of our society.
But I can't say I had an easy time reading this. Tried reading it on the bus to work and it went slow. At times I felt my unfamiliarity with Hegel was really holding me back, so I'm not going to pretend I understood it all.
I think I'm going to see the movie see the movie later to day, probably should have seen it first.

I really like the way Debord writes but it's hard to understand. What really bothers me is that I don't understand how could exchange-value rule over use-value.

The movie doesn't add much to the book if have already read it, since it is basically only him reciting parts of the book over movie clips.
My advice would be to read the Commentaries on the SotS, as it is a update considering the post-70s society we live in. Most notably, he posits that there is a new kind of spectacle : the integrated spectacle which combine characteristics of the concentrated and diffuse spectacles.
Anyway, it's pretty short and easier to read than the SotS.
There are also pretty interesting brief texts to be found in the SI issues, especially "The Decline and the Fall of the spectacular commodity-economy".

If you want to watch one of his films, I would recommend you "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni".

I just wanted to add that "The Decline and the Fall of the spectacular commodity-economy" was written before the SotS, and there he introduces his theory of the spectacle by looking at the Watts riots in LA of 1965.

Good question, I don't get it either.

He says exchange value did this by

And then he says
In knab's notes it's linked to the tendency of rate of profit to fall over time.

..so I don't know.. that in a society of abundance, exchange value has become the measurement of use value instead of a result of it?

thanks, maybe I will.

adding the pdf of
Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in case anyone else wants to read it.

..the pdf

Let's read this for next week?

sure why not.

I think what he's trying to say that while originally exchange-value stood for use-value, gradually use-value lost its importance and now exchange value stands on its own. What I don't get is how and why did this happened? From the little Marx I know there's no exchange-value without use-value, so this is really confusing.

It's really short so maybe we could also read the marginal notes:
libcom.org/files/agamben-marginal_notes_on_comments.pdf
They are some comments by Giorgio Agamben on SotS and Comments.

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I think hes suggesting that the use value of e.g. a pair of Adidas sweatpants, is not in their use a sweatpants, but as a part of the spectacle. And since the spectacle is "pseudo-use", then exchange value becomes the dominant measurement of value.
Does that make sense?

Damn it, "Comments" is fucking scary.

I guess it does, it's just so hard to put all the pieces together.

Don't forget that we are going to discuss "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle" (>>1806649 ) on Sunday! It's just 36 pages so if you have not started it yet, you can still easily read it. You can read it even if you have not read the original Society of the Spectacle.

Please join us on Sunday!

So in the society of the spectacle there was this one part that I couldn't find right now, but the way it was worded, it reminded me of the popular meme of "make anime real".
It made me think, is the popularity of that meme a primitive of subconscious understanding of what deBord is proposing? Specifically his idea of negation of culture?
Since anime is a spectacular pseudo-life imitating and negating real lived life, making anime real, would mean the negation of anime, preferably by the awakening of the proletariat as historical actors.

In another interesting part, near the end, he writes.

I think many of his ideas could, if properly presented, resonate with a lot of people that aren't moved by traditional socialist talking points. I'm thinking regular people, that feel the cultural effects of capitalism, more than the economic exploitation, from religious conservatives, to salary men and neets.

I had the flu and sort of forgot about the entire book club, but will probably read the books by monday.
is it just the two of us in this thread?

I'm not sure which part you are referring to. Do you remember the chapter?

Some of Debord's ideas are well received, many people will agree that they are just spectators in their own life, or that most of what is out there fake.

Sadly I don't. Probably 6 or 5, but it's not super important, you kind of had to take that particular bit, a little out of context for it to fit with "make anime real". I'll see if I can find it later.
But I'm thinking more in the general spirit of his theory. That even if they are contradictory, there is on a fundamental level something similar in the absurdist idea of bringing anime in to real life, and his rejection of the spectacular life as real life.
The idea of making anime real, is necessarily the idea of partaking in real lived events, and the implicit statement that this is impossible in current society.

To be honest I always thought that the "make anime real" thing was about having sex with semen demons. But if they feel like life in anime seems realer, actually "lived", compared to our own, then making it real could be anti-Spectacle. I think.

Maybe you could ask /a/?

Yes, Debord has a pretty bleak outlook in this one. IIRC, he sort of implies that capitalism has won and there isn't much to do about it. He also outlines pretty sharply the aspects of life under neoliberalism which are miserable behind the facade, something he also did in the first part of "In girum imus nocte…"
That said, take some things he said with a grain of salt. Debord became a bit paranoid and depressed after decades of alcohol abuse and the murder of his friend Gérard Lébovici (he even wrote two books who are entirely dedicated to responding to what journalists said about him).
Moreover, three decades has passed since he wrote this book. Neoliberalism was fairly new, society was arguably more centralized, the world wide web didn't exist, etc. Even though a lot of his criticisms still apply, I don't think the situation is as hopeless as he made out to be.

I'm always looking at this thread when it pops up at the top of the catalog.
I didn't read the SotS with you because I already did a few years ago and I should rather finish to read the four books I'm slowly going through right now (especially Capitalist Realism, which remind me of Debord's theory), but I definitely need to revisit it when I will have more theory under my belt (particularly the 4th chapter which I didn't understand at the time).
My memories of his texts are pretty fuzzy tbh but it's always nice to talk about Debord with someone, I don't have this opportunity very often.

I've read Fisher's Hauntology book and this from Comments really reminded me of it:

Quick reminder that it's still not too late to start reading any join our discussion!

so I did. I tried to lead them in to speculation, see if I could have them imagine a world where anime was real. Hoping they would be able to accidentally do what leftist find so hard, imagine a world after capitalism **to keep in the theme of Mark Fisher*
The thread got deleted after some hours, but I got a few responses. One guy talked about how reality was subjective and that his wifu was real. Not encouraging. One of the others at least started talking about how he would use his magic powers to make the world run better, but he deleted the comment after a short while.
One of them made the statement that making anime real would destroy anime, but when I tried to use the opportunity to dig deeper, the thread got deleted.
Then I looked at some other threads and found pic related.
Ignoring their complete ontological confusion and despair, I highlighted the important bit. Anime characters are alive, we are not. With that mindset , "making anime real" becomes a revolutionary slogan against the spectacle, they just have to connect the dots.
Could be my energy would have been better spent other places, but there is something there.

Interesting. I'm not sure if it's against the Spectacle or just complete submission.

Oh, I don't mean that they are revolutionary now, because the idea of making anime real has yet to be fully understood and embraced, that will require understanding of the consequences of the idea and a theory to put in to praxis.
As things are now they exist as you say, in complete submission to this particular part of the spectacle, but it's not a pleasant experience, it's agony. The thread I found those posts in is called "what was the moment you realized that you're a complete empty shell of a human and anime is one of the few remaining escapes you have left?".
Already disillusioned with the rest of society I would think there is a thin line between painful submission and open revolt. To a certain degree this can already be seen with the popularity of the far right in anime community.

I'm far from sure, but perhaps this is one of many demographic hot spots where the spectacle becomes so insufferable that true radicalization becomes possible.

Is the Chinese terracotta army actually fake?

Is someone here actually read it?
If so, is this good or shit?

It's nothing more than a Salon/VICE hitpiece. The entire book's premise is that the internet was free of hate before those evil alt righters showed up. I gagged when the author claimed Obama is the opposite GWB in the second paragraph. Your average neoliberal schlock you can read on reddit for free.
Tl;dr : it's shit.

It's on libgen now so you can read it if you want.

So what did you think of the book? It's definitely easier to read, although the warning at the beginning, that he purposefully left things out to make it less useful to the enemy, made me a bit afraid.

He talks a lot about people not being capable of thinking and talking effectively, only in the language of the Spectacle. What do you think of it? Is there actually that big of a difference? If so, would it be possible to "unlearn" the language and logic of the Spectacle, from older books maybe?

He also talks about "the falling rate of profit" for surveillance, where they snoop on so many things that they no longer can process the data and nobody knows who is wiretapping who. Wasn't this outdated by big data?

This passage from Marginal Notes on Comments on the Society of the Spectacle really cleared things up:

thebaffler.com/latest/transgression-nagle
here's an excerpt of it. you can see for yourself.

So if the Alt-Right exists is because of Holla Forums?

Tactics for fucking over the right.

audience—and gives full respect to the other's values—would have ruled out attacks on the American flag. The responsible organizer would have known that it is the establishment that has betrayed the flag while the flag,itself, remains the glorious symbol of America's hopes and aspirations, and he would have conveyed this message to his audience. On another level of communication, humor is essential, for through humor much is
accepted that would have been rejected if presented seriously. This is a sad and lonely generation. It laughs too little, and this, too, is tragic.
rhetorical garbage about "Burn the system down!" Yippie yells of "Do it!" or "Do your thing." What else? Bombs? Sniping? Silence when police are killed and screams of "murdering fascist pigs" when others are killed? Attacking and baiting the police? Public suicide? "Power comes out of the
barrel of a gun!" is an absurd rallying cry when the other side has all the guns. Lenin was a pragmatist; when he returned to what was then Petrograd from exile, he said that the Bolsheviks stood for getting power through the ballot but would reconsider after they got the guns! Militant mouthings?
Spouting quotes from Mao,Castro, and Che Guevara, which are as germane to our highly
technological, computerized, cybernetic, nuclear-powered, mass media society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport?

Can you please stop shitting up everything with your liberal bullshit?

Anarkiddie detected. Does it hurt having your stupidity pointed out by someone who actually did something with his life?

What's going to be the next book?

yeah, the introduction was a bit weird.. and the book had a certain conspiratorial feel to it, fake terracotta army, the assassinations, computers programed in critical thought.

Could be he's right about the language of the spectacle. I can't really see it except for social media, but there it becomes abundantly clear. People Using snap chat and facebook and stuff like that are constantly trying to commodify all aspects of their own lives, measuring the exchange value in "likes" or "reweets" and similar units. Tweeting your lunch represents the most spectacular form of interpersonal communication, then it's hard to say how far we are from the absence of spectacular language and logic. Only an outsider would really be able to tell.

Yeah, you could say it's outdated. Depends how you see it. In work hours compared to information, there is definitively a rising profit, but when comparing the amount of information with usable data there is obviously a negative trend. Still, the expansion of the surveillance state is one of the more worrying aspects of our society.

someone suggested simulacra and simulation by jean baudrillard, but I can't find a pdf.

I just finished to read it, it's surprisingly good and it's something that worth to be read.
It's about the Alt-Right, Tumblr and the Identity Politics including the masculinity faggotry and Tumbr culture.
I know some people here will probably hate the book after reading it because of its angle with the geek culture and the imageboard culture, but let be honest the author is not wrong with what she said…

Here's the book. We can give it a try. It's around 100 pages though, so maybe we could split it up for two weeks?

Debord seemed pretty "upset" in the first few pages that people reduce the Spectacle to mass media, and social media did not even exist back then, so I don't think that's what he was talking about. I think it's more like how people use managerial and economic terms to describe social relations and basically everything. Like "social capital", "investing time into relationships", things like that.

sure, at least two weeks.

Yeah, I agree with that, and didn't mean to reduce the spectacle to only social media, but that social media to me represents the most obvious example of how our interpersonal communication takes on the characteristics of the spectacle, and that the true extent of the spectacles influence becomes impossible to measure since we, having known no unspectacular society, lack a point of reference.
But you make an interesting point about the use of managerial terms in social relationships.

And yeah, social media wasn't around when deBord was writing, and so it's a new development and has some characteristics that are different.
In SotS he describes a spectacle that functions only as a one way communication from top to bottom, with specialists in control. In comments he notes how specialists are disappearing, and now the one way communication is loosing grounds to mass-communication, but it still retains the qualities of the spectacle, "reuniting the separated only in their separateness".

Let's say we read it until the The Implosion of Meaning in the Media chapter this week, otherwise I will just try to read the whole thing at the last moment.

I think the point was not that there are less experts but that anyone can be considered an expert for a moment just to be discredited in the next. Adding to the general confusion and unanswerable lies. At least that's how I interpreted it. And it would fit in with my experience of "social" media, where it's usually a few users who dominate the scene while most are ignored.

gentle bump

r/socialism hates it apparently.

bamp

Bump

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In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of data. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a measurement.

I feel like I'm reading the schizophrenic ramblings of a madman.

...

...

Is anyone hyped for this?

>>>/fringe/

Don't forget that the deadline is this Sunday!

So I've finished reading it, it was wild and I'm not sure if I understood anything at all.

Are you still here? Have you read it? Should I give up?

i understand what the graphic designer was trying to do but it wasn't a very good idea

isn't it all just his recent talks in a form of book?

what the heck is cour?

heart

Still here, haven't finished it yet. But I'm ready to give up on the book club. Two people is to few for a book club, and going in to this I had hoped we could get at least ten people to join on a forum with 1000+ users.

youtube.com/watch?v=IRFEzky7i04

What do you think about it so far? It seemed very esoteric to me and the writing wasn't really helping, it jumped around topics a lot. It was interesting though, especially the use of deterrence, which I guess was more relevant during the writing of the work, but still seems to be an useful concept to me. However I can't really understand why he claims that Territory has completely disappeared.

I'm sad because I really liked this idea, it was good to have someone to talk about these things.

Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra
You're a revolutionary and didn't read it? Bad.

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