Daily Theory Thread

It's that footfag poster!

Towards a new socialism

As a compsci person, I don't know how I feel about us doing philosophy

CompSci people have been doing philosophy since CS was a thing, Cockshott is just simply stupid.

bump

Not studying theory atm, because I have too many bullshit college courses right now. So instead I get to do bullshit truth tables.

Why do you have college courses during the summer?

Because I get paid to go to college and if I don't take courses, I don't eat.

I just finished re-reading Veblens 'Theory of the Leisure Class' and 'Theory of Business Enterprise' back-to-back.
I highly recommend the works to any red here that would like a criticism of capitalism/scarcity economics that goes beyond the empty and tired rhetoric of 'muh proles!' or 'muh exploitation!'.

Now that is just utterly retarded.
How the bloody hell to you expect to get anything out of the republic, by reading it in isolation?
In order to get anything out of Hellenic philosophy, you need to start at the beginning and slowly work your way up to the point that you have interest in.

Reading both the Iliad, odyssey and a book summarizing the Hellenic gods is a prerequisite before you even get into Hellenic philosophy proper.
After that you should read the surviving works of the pre-Socratics.
Then you come to Plato, you will not get anything out of reading just one of his works, I recommend that you buy 'Plato: Complete Works' by John M Cooper and read everything in it.
After Plato, you will need to read through the corpus of works by Aristotle (Just keep in mind that he is much less important then Plato and wrong about a number of things).
Finally you can close out by a study of the Enneads by Plotinus.

Foot-fags belong in a gulag.

Which do you recommend before The Republic then? Save for certain parts, it is very well comprehensible.

I've been reading about ancient ascetics. Rabia Basri, Buddha, Hasidim of Ashkenaz, Mahavira. I like these people a lot. I've also been reading Cioran and Leopardi.

I've seen a few people at school that say this, how exactly does that work?

I felt that I got more out of "To Our Friends". I'm still not sure that I understand them properly.

I thought I was rather clear.

1: Read the Iliad, odyssey and a book that provides a summery on the Hellenic gods.

2: Read the surviving works of the pre-Socratics.

3: Buy 'Plato: Complete Works' by John M Cooper and read that from cover to cover (it is arranged by period).

4: Read the extant works of Aristotle (just be aware that he is much worse then Plato).

5: Read the Enneads by Plotinus ('Plotinus: Or the simplicity of vision' is the best companion book for this).

I highly doubt that you understood much of what is being said on any level beyond a surface reading.
One needs to understand both context and the fundamentals before being able to comprehend more abstract concepts.

I did years on active duty for this shit, user. Now I'm fighting to make it free for everyone else, because I'm not a fucking class traitor.

t. Burger

Cost of living stipend. It only gets paid for the time I'm enrolled in classes. No classes = no stipend = no money.

As expected.

pantsubampu

History and international relations.

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can you recommend some good theory books by black trans-women please? I really do want to read them.

are you a brainlet? it means the statement is vacuously true, it's impossible to determine the truth of a conditional statement if the hypothesis is false.

And this is why Leninism can't work in reality

An easier example of this is the following statement:
If it's raining, we can assume the ground is wet.

However, if it's not raining, we can't assess the truth of that statement and assume it's true.

Currently reading debt: the first 5000 years

I'm reading psychology text books.
Does that count?

Yes.

Just finished First as tragedy, then as farce, which was intersting read, although much went over my head. Currently reading Reform or revolution

What did you like about it?

The prince,Leviathan and The Doctrine of Fascism.

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. Pretty amazing how close he got to modern day neurological concepts by pure observation and reasoning alone, and is able to write it in such a concise and logically flowing manner. Almost feels like reading a book by a time traveler who wanted to let everyone know how the brain worked but couldn't use any modern science. It's a shame he got bullied by ivory tower philosophers and later kind of recanted it.

He reminds me a lot of Democritus, another genius who got really close to modern science but was largely ignored until years later.

Vacuous truth is a retarded concept. True and false shouldn't apply. But whatever, I accept the retarded theory they're pushing, pass the test and move on.

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Currently reading Ecology of Freedom again, along with Oppenheimer and Lakey's A Manual For Direct Action

I've been reading a bunch of Camus and Kafka, along with other important fiction like Catch 22 so I can better understand the allusions within more current theory books. I'm also hoping to start "Living in the End Times" as I've heard it's more beginner level on Zizek.
After I'm more grounded in literature I'm going to start some more easier intros into specific leftist theory while starting to study philosophy/anthropology in a top public US university next year.
Glad I found leftypol my sophomore year of high school or I could have ended up as a socdem ComSci stemfag

Cybernetics stuff.

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Just started reading this

Do you want me to read other stuff? What you lot probably claim to be theory I'd rather classify as cringey long-form poetry.

That sounds like something you should work through. Why does a text have to be written in the scientific genre (and it is a genre) for you to read it? And what's wrong with poetry?

Reading Chunag dead generation… excellent work of economic history.

Read this:
marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm

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Got any specific thinkers in mind or are you just parroting scientistic talking points?

up

"The conspiracy against this world will be known through its war machines. A war machine is itself “a
pure form of exteriority” that “explains nothing,” but there are plenty of stories to tell about them (TP,
354, 427). They are the heroes of A Thousand Plateaus—Kleist’s skull-crushing war machine, the
migratory war machine that the Vandals used to sack Rome, the gun that Black Panther George Jackson
grabs on the run, and the queer war machine that excretes a thousand tiny sexes. “Each time there is an
operation against the state—insubordination, rioting, guerilla warfare, or revolution as an act—it can be
said that a war machine has revived” (386). War machines are also the greatest villains of A Thousand
Plateaus, making all other dangers “pale by comparison” (231)—there is the constant state appropriation
of the war machine that subordinates war to its own aims (418), the folly of the commercial war machine
(15), the paranoia of the fascist war machine (not the state army of totalitarianism) (230–31), and, worst
of them all, the “worldwide war machine” of capitalism, “whose organization exceeds the State apparatus
and passes into energy, military–industrial, and multinational complexes” to wage peace on the whole
world (387, 419–21, 467)."

boundary2.org/2016/06/ending-the-world-as-we-know-it-an-interview-with-andrew-culp/

Anyone here read this? It's seriously amazing.

Its really good, banaji is one of the few people actually carrying historical materialism forward and expanding on marx's work. He's especially good at enriching the idea of a mode of production, drawing a new distinction between a mode of production and a mode of exploitation of labor. Because he's first and foremost an historian, all of his theoretical points are backed with rich historical detail and attention to historiography. Although he's a trot and I'm a tankie I highly recommend.

"Two Hundred Years Together" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and "An open letter to open-minded progressives." by Mencius Moldbug. A Holla Forumsack recommended those to me, and I've been enjoying them even though I disagree with a lot of their ideas.

Society of the Spectacle
Very interesting, but a pain to read.

I really hope you don't take Solzhenitsyn seriously. That man should have been executed before Khrushchev took power.

I've had a hard time finding anything, but praise for "The Literary Giant Who Defied Soviets." This is understandable coming from the capitalist West, do you know of any good resources that counter this pro-capitalist, anti-Soviet narrative?