/theory/

What book(s) are you currently reading and what do you think about it/them? Discuss.
Pic related

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marxists.org/reference/archive/paine/works/age-reason/ch01.htm
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youtube.com/watch?v=uYloEOwKjjA
libgen.io/
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I'm reading The Bible. It BTFOs all shitty ideologies in favor of worshipping true Jehovah in the trinity. Definitely should be read, read it once a month if you can

this, and i think its awesome

Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti, and Heraclitus' Fragments.

For now nothing.
Anyone has a good book about the history of the Roman Empire decline?

I tried to read it, but I thought it was boring and poorly thought out. Never did finish it.

Took a break from das kap to read conquest of bread

Now read this
marxists.org/reference/archive/paine/works/age-reason/ch01.htm

A "break"

Yea, it's dense. It doesn't make sense to overload yourself with complicated economic theory without processing it first. This is the same with anything really, and often I've found it's not until rereading something that it really sticks

...

One of the guys from my IWW gave me a book called "An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital," by Micheal Heinrich and told me to read it.

I mostly know all of the stuff already in the book, but her was annoyed that I had specific ideological issues which weren't polished, like I had a slightly flawed understanding of the labor theory of value.

Against His-tory, Against Leviathan. I am in love and am really starting to question my stance within Anarchism.

I've always had sympathy for primitivist and Anti-Civ theory. Looks like I might be going full caveman myself.

Any other AnPrims in here?

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well aren't you special

Debt: the First 5,000 Years

The Silmarillion. Actually my favorite Tolkien book so far.

As for leftist literature,
1) Towards a New Socialism, which is somewhat interesting, but for me forms a better case for a reconsideration of the feasibility of planning rather than a blueprint for how to go about it.
2) Mutual Aid.

Pretty entertaining, easy read. If you're a Burgerstani, you should read this if nothing else to be able to blow Democrat apologizes with a good understanding of the history of the party's betrayals.

blow Democrat apologists out

Right now, Alain Badiou's Ethics.
I like it a lot, if you enjoy Zizek, it's a great but short read.

Leafing through Towards a New Socialism.
Some better formulated critiques of Stalin and Post Stalin era USSR than I typically read, but not unfair in my opinion.

I'm more of a Trot/Leninist, but I'm probably going to go through The Ego and His Own next, just to de-spook myself of attachments to liberal ideological formations that still haunt my worldview.

I'd like to venture more into cybernetic-soclialism ala Cockshott/Project Cybersyn.

More on the historical side:
Just picked up a copy of Inevitable Revolutions by Walter LaFeber from a local Little Free Library, it goes over US activities in Central/South America in some detail.
I'll probably drop it back off when I'm done with it.

Been on my radar for a while, thanks for the reminder, I'll probably slip that in soon

isn't this the book Jimmy Dore shills for all the time?

Yes. It's one of the easiest ways to radicalize a "progressive."

Isn't Michael Heinrich the guy who claims that the only way of getting a good estimate of socially necessary labor time in any possible society is through buying an selling? And your friend thinks that's a defensible position?

Pics related. I´ve mostly been reading essays and pamphlets that can be finished in one or two sittings. I recently read the Lyons Theses, and am about to read What is to be Done, and re-read Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy.

He takes economics back to the real world and the ways of classical economics. No abstractions based on perfect or imperfect markets. Only based on real empirical verified competition. Gives graphical evidence for his claims and shows that many of Marx's predictions and observations still hold true today.

I'm currently reading "Vävarnas Barn" (The Weaver's Children) by Fogelström. It's the first part of a prequel trilogy to the Swedish classic "Mina Drömmars Stad" (city of my dreams). It basically deals with a very human account of a working class family in cloth production during the manufacture period of pre-mechanized early capitalism. This is before the breaking up of the feudal estates which essentially made industrial workers into some form of caste-less dahlits. It's pretty brutal and really geets into the back breaking work, the filth, the 14-hour work days, the hopelessness, and living cramped in with 4 people sharing the same bead in a tiny workshop room shared by 5 other families. What really hits it home is just how similar the situation of the average worker is to that of the imprisoned criminals the book also depicted. The class society is stark and there is plenty of semi-rape, semi-prostitution going on as the bourgeois pricks basically take what they want, including sex, from the workers under their yoke. Brutal stuff but important this is the kind of history wage labour has and important to remember when ever some liberal goes on about how it's just a contract between two mutually consenting parties.

I'm unsure if there is an english translation.

Heinrich is great, one of the few people actually doing critique of political economy rather than just engaging in Marxist-flavored economics. Read Backhaus too.

how do you sit and read theories if you're a really slow reader that gets tired easily?

I find audiobooks really useful but most of the good stuff is only in print or shitty librivox recordings at best.

anyway I'm currently listening to Shock Doctrine when I go jogging. The audiobook is really good production-wise and the book itself is amazingly written. It is also a very depressive book. Good book to radicalize normies with.
the thing I like most about the audiobook is that it feels like a sci-fi book, I don't know, something about the narration and the crazy events described that makes me think I'm listening to the Old Man's War series. (I love It)

after that I plan on giving the /r/communalists production of The Murray Bookchin Reader a go. the narrator is pretty good for an amateur narrator.

About to finish homage to catalonia. I'm mostly reading it because I'm from barcelona and it is about local history, altough I already was an ancom. If you ever read it, make sure to read the 2 annexes as they discuss the political situation and develop into the factions of the spanish civil war. They are not included in some books so be careful.

I know it's not theory tho.

Strasser and the Ego and Its Own

Strasser says a lot of shit, but it's pretty interesting nontheless. His chapter on the Jews was pretty clever ; his chapter on Marxism is full of shit, as one could conceive.
I really don't like Stirner and find him a bit unclear at times, but it's still a useful tool and it goes deeper than the spooks memes.

And yes, of course, Asser is not leftist theory but I'm curious about him.

Where do you find audio books these days?

Currently reading the Bread Book, and I have a few thoughts about it. One thing I really like was Kropotkin's criticism of property rights, essentially saying that in modern society no achievement is a purely individual act. Anything you accomplish is based on the collective efforts not only of the people around you, but also thousands of generations before you. We would never have gone to space if it weren't for Newton discovering gravity, for example.

He also has some interesting ideas surrounding spontaneous order, essentially arguing that in a truly revolutionary period, the masses can and should organize themselves organically and work to fulfill their own needs rather than wait for some political group to do it for them. By doing this they seize control of the revolution, rather than it falling to a new elite.

I also like his somewhat humanistic ideas, where he argues that the revolution must be for and by the people, with the goal of improving their lives and making them free. Any activity that counters this goal is counter revolutionary, and so even temporary measures of statist repression, confiscation of food a la War Communism, etc need to be opposed, because in making the lives of the proles worse, they are undermining the purpose of the revolution.

I'm a little critical of some things however, for example he seems vague on exactly what kinds of organizational structures the new society would use. His writing on spontaneous order seems to imply a kind of direct democracy, and given what i know about communalism I can really see how his ideas influenced Murray Bookchin. At the same time he argues against the use of coercion, saying that it is the basis of statism. He points out that organization on the basis of voluntary association has proven to be just as effective as the state, pointing to various social societies that existed voluntarily (literary societies, social clubs, business cartels etc). He argues that humanity's natural social tendencies, as well as the power of social pressure can create a voluntary communistic society. Where I disagree with him here, is that unlike a literary society or other group, you can't opt out of society at large. If you don't like how a social club is run you can always back out of it, but if you disagree with the principles along which society is organized then you are either compelled to obey them through force, or society sits by and does nothing while you undermine its core values.

I find that in my own views I do lean more towards Anarchism than statist socialism, but this last point is something I can't get past. I do believe his ideas on spontaneous order are feasible, or at least that the democratic principles therein can be applied to more conventional political organization. But his ideas about non-coercive organization are a little too idealistic I think, the fact is that there will always be people who refuse to accept the socialist order and will work to undermine it, and those people have to be controlled. I would basically like to see the kind of direct democracy that Kropotkin describes, but one that has no problem with whacking a few kulaks should the occasion arise.

I find a good way to stay focused is to switch books every little while. I might reach 20-30 pages from one before switching to another, then another, then back to the first one.

I'm reading this currently and had the same thought. Kropotkin does argue for anarchism in more of a realistic way than Rothbard. I'm skeptical of vangaurdism though. We need to keep in mind warfare has changed and that technology has changed for the better was well. The idea of the Vangaurd system will be less authoritarian today than it was in the past. I do prefer the anarchist ideal by the end of the day.

I read a little of Capital every day.

/r/communalism is having a audiobook production project. If you're into that, what they've made so far is pretty good quality.

there's also Librivox which is a site for public-domain audiobooks. Old books and the production aren't professional but there are some that are alright.

The main source of audiobooks is checking Audible.com to see if they have something I wan't, and if they do and the production sounds good enough (Those book are professionally made) the I go to audiobookbay and they probably have a torrent of it.

Mises pretty much btfo's anarchists and syndicalists but his bitching about how communism is a threat to civilization gets annoying
also he unironically thinks that keynesians are commies in denial

and Harrigan's book is a pretty interesting read about corporate strategy so far

Well when I say vanguard I basically just mean a single organization, rather than groups of volunteers running around collectivizing everything wherever and however they see fit with no coordination. Essentially I would like to see a revolutionary worker's state, but one with localized power that operates through direct democracy.

How does he BTFO anybody?

he didn't, it's obviously bait.
bukharin btfoed mises even before he even was born

Slowly making my way through these.

he argues that syndicalist system cannot structurally adjust itself to changing demand because of trade unions rigidity and opposition to change

Kek that's literally a "but what if they mismanage things" kind of argument. The rigidity or fluidity of any organization depends on all kinds of things including its organizational structures, systems of reward and incentive, and the general attitudes of its leadership/membership.

that's what he is talking about
after structural change some groups of workers may find themselves in a worse position than before
so they would oppose this structural change and so supply would not meet demand if you not coerce them to comply with this change thus violating their property rights on their MOPs

Say I want to get into "real" Western philosophy, until about Zizek or so. What should I do? My thought was to go onto the SEP and look at the references for what to read, I naively think in order:

aristotle, plato, epicurus, descartes, locke, hume, rousseau, kant, fichte, hegel, feuerbach, adam smith, marx, frankfurt school

Can I have corrections please?

But the Bible is not a full ideology. I can run a socialist, capitalist, feudal, w/e society and then just add the Bible on top.

pls someone answer me

Definitely read Plato before Aristotle, and read some greek mythology and the Iliad and the Odysseus before that.

I've read a couple chapters of pic related a while ago. Should I pick it back up? I think I've seen some people say it's not that great here, so I'm not really sure about it. Anyone here who has read the whole thing and recommends it?

I used to read books a lot when i was little, i would go to the library and get stacks and stack of books.
Now i never leave the house and just shitpost on the internet a lot.
Sometimes i will go onto the pdf's board and download some books, and i have found some good books through that, but i never read them, i have a folder filled with pdf's that i have not read.
The last book i physically bought was infinite jest, i decided i will not read it, shoved it into a drawer and that i would only read it if my computer dies.
The last time i did that i finished reading the man in the high castle.

I think the internet is a burden and a good thing. I have acess to all this info, but im wasting my time shitposting, if there were no internet i would have no money and be sitting in front of a couch with my brain rotting

try this
gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=797FEB26B16C08D79658546277FFB27E

Aristotle's "Organon" and Polyani's "The Great Transformation." I need to finish reading the catholic catechism too (I had a really shit sunday school program growing up so at the moment I'm basically catholic in name only sadly enough)

can be oversimplified at times from what I've heard. Really doesn't agree with the standard marxist view of history (and probably a bit weaker than the marxist version anyway), however it's got some really interesting ideas in it. Worth a read. Just take it with a grain of salt.

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Unless you have mechanisms for dealing with structural change, such as unemployment caused by new technologies. An idea I had would be to have a robust system of employment insurance, basically if you are laid off because an industry is becoming obsolete then you are guaranteed your current pay without working for at least a year afterwards, and you are guaranteed employment when it becomes available.

Basically getting laid off would mean a year's vacation and a new career.

Under capitalism meanwhile you have corporations deliberately sabotaging new technologies because they threaten to make those corporations obsolete. Just look at how hard big oil worked to destroy the electric car.

could I run a GNU/Jesus system?

Alright, thanks for the tip, bud.

Anything good that can be used to BTFO people who say that capitalism offers "freedom"? I know all the usual suspects (bread book, soul of man) but is there anything more 'philosophical'? Or not, I'm just curious because this shit comes up a lot on HN and shitty subreddits.

Drop them this and when they start bitching about how Stalin said it start lecturing them about fallacies.

Or read Stirner.

I just read "Fall of Giants", which was the first book in the Century trilogy. I think it was a honest and accurate lens into the reality of WW1-era Europe and America. Also, it is extremely satisfying when, after half a book of build-up, the proles rise up and launch the February Revolution.

It's an excellent book for its anthropological take on money and debt that doesn't scare off normies with class conflict analysis, but Greaber seems to ignore that even outside of its origin and continuance as a state-backed instrument, debt would have likely been formed and enforced in Ancom or Mutualist societies as well.

In socialism?

For one thing you've got an entirely different problem from supply and demand if an organization is in some way subjecting its constituents to things they don't find beneficial. That is just a tyranny or maybe some form of incompetence.

But on the other hand we already have people demands not met by supply right now. On the most basic level we have housing and food problems, with the increasingly highlighted phenomenon of food deserts, and the ever present one of high prices for housing while there are more houses than people on the market for houses. We also have less jobs than people looking for jobs.

And furthermore, even many if not most small businesses suffer from the exact organizational deficiency of seeing their constituents (employees) disagreeing with the manner in which the business is managed. And there is no way in which an employee can remedy this because the organizational unit of a business isn't about pleasing or including its employees in the decision making process, it's about selling goods and services for a profit. So the main solution is to leave the business, but this will not and clearly doesn't necessarily have any effect on the way the business is run, and if you go start your own business you still subject the workers in your business to the exact same predicament of having to work for someone that has no incentive to regard your problems with their leadership. So this entire set of problems, we already suffer.

I might be confusing him with others, but I thought Graeber actually was interested in the way debt could be used in an anarchist socialist society to create forms of order? But I could be wrong, because I'm pretty sure he is some form of anarchist and that debt inherently creates a hierarchy between debtor and creditor.

That argument is pretty weak, since the person responding could very well say that just because s/he is living with finite material conditions regardless of how the means of production are structured, such as dealing with sickness, pain, death, hunger, thirst, etc., that if freedom is defined at least in part by access to material conditions, no one can ever be free. It's a shit counterargument to a shit argument

What they will point to is that
It's basically this argument:
youtube.com/watch?v=uYloEOwKjjA
Your job would be:

Unless I am mistaken, that sounds unlikely, if he was referring to debt as the series of financial instruments we are familiar with today. In 5KY, however, he makes a distinction between this form of debt and debt as seen in some tribal societies, where individuals try to keep a symbolic "debt" to one another in the interest of cohesiveness (which may be what you are referring to). I argue that if the tribal society was allowed to develop further, in absence of a state, this would have likely evolved into fiduciary, force-backed obligations, though.
Yeah, he's an "Anarchist without Adjectives", and that was the major point he hammed in D5KY. That said, I disagree that hierarchies, in all their forms, would disappear absent the State.

Reading these 3. Trouble in Paradise is the first book I've read by Zizek in full and its not very good. It's supposed to be a whole book where he looks at capitalism, what it is, whats wrong with it, why, what we can do to fix it and how we implement that change. It really doesn't address these issues at all substantially and he hardly stays on topic. He mostly just goes on random tangents about little observations he makes about culture and points out ironies or hypocrisy and it doesn't contribute at all to what the topic of the book is. Aside from a few interesting points in themselves like statistics he cites, there isn't much useful about this book. I'm 3/4 through and its painfully hard to get myself to read the rest.

Only read a bit of the other two books, got October cause it was on sale half off and i figured why not get something more easy reading also i know jack about the Russian revolution. Inventing the Future is apparently super insightful and talks about reaching socialism/post-scarcity through automation and stuff but I've only read the intro so far.

bump

thanks

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Burger detected

Motherfucker.

bump

reading about le value form *tips armchair*

Currently reading "the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon". A few chapters in so far but it's already taught me that socdems were always counter-revolutionary scumbags. June 1848 never forget

You got a pdf? When I google it I only find a 20 or so page one and I know it's longer than that.

At what point in my reading 'journey' can I begin to read leftist books?

Anyone here read Wage Labour and Capital? I am thinking of reading it

Fucking cucks

Tremendously easy book, great for beginners. Even your dog and grandma will understand the book. Make sure to read Value, Price and Profit next, it adds certain things Marx's theory and contains a great argument that BTFOs the argument against raising wages.

Thanks for the info and for the pdf too.

I've got an .epub that I can convert to a PDF later. Library Genesis appears to be down right now, I'm very concerned.

You slavishly support politicians who gargle Israeli semen while following an ideology either created by a jew to excuse fucking children(ancap) or a jew to support proto-zionism(Hess).

wtf i love nazism now

pic related

The russian domain has been down for a week, use libgen.io/

The "start with the Greeks" meme is nonsense, find topics that interest you then read good literature and research about them and look up what you dont understand. Trying to make it through the entire western canon is just going to be frustrating and dissuade you.

Of course, if youre excited to read Plato and Aristotle, do it, it's incredibly valuable. But in my experience youll come to an interest in them through reading other philosophy and theres nothing wrong with working "backwards" or jumping back and forth. Youre going to be applying your own implicit ideology and social assumptions to the Greeks anyway, it's not like starting with them means you're "untainted" or even effectively starting from the beginning.

Reading pic related right now. Hoping it helps me develop my thoughts on syndicalism.

I recently read Desert by Anonymous. I really enjoyed it, and if you're looking into primitivism, I suggest you give it a read.

I'll add to this that some early philosophers like Heraclitus for his dialectics are good, and so may be others, but I think it is probably best that you prepare yourself to read Hegel, one of the major philosophers of all times. This is my own reading plan.

philosophy is a huge undertaking and not at least getting Plato and (selected) Aristotle before you begin is a fool's errand tbh

there's no excuse not to read Heraclitus and shit either when it's like 100 lines long

you need to read Kant before Hegel, preferably Fichte as well
and you should at least read Descartes, Locke, Hume and Leibniz before Kant

also the dialectic is begun with Plato's Parmenides according to Hegel, and reaches antithesis in Descartes

Those too. I'm planning Plato > Some Aristotle > Some medieval philosophy > Spinoza and Descartes > Those you mention > Kant and some of the German idealists, then finally Hegel himself. I'm trying to get acquainted with basic logic to provide for lack of philosophical training too.

In fact I've been planning to read him after I'm done with Fragments :^)

oh yeah very good plan. which medieval philosophers were you interested in? Spinoza is next level, very good for understanding Hegel. but very difficult too. some dude laid out Ethics in geometric order which helps to read it imho.

Aquinas and Lucretius, and perhaps Plotinus. Perhaps I'll add others on the way. After that my goal for now is to take Heidegger and some French philosophers like Badiou, Lacan, Foucault, Althusser and more.

Good choices. Aquinas is excellent and Augustine too. but
Lucretius was Roman and Plotinus was late Greek. But yeah neo-Platonism is CRIMINALLY underappreciated. Hegel cribbed a lot from Proclus who systematized a lot of what came before. Plotinus is poetry, genius. That shit was like doing what pomo only hoped it could do 1500 years prior.

Heidegger is essential.
Foucault is very good. Interesting they converge a bit thematically in their later works.

Badiou and Lacan are trash. Zizek is more than you'll ever need from them.

Yeah Zizek is in my plans but not too much, and I'll have to read Freud too. What's wrong with those two btw?

Freud is largely bullshit on it own merits and the good shit is more or less plagiarized fam. Essential to understand the modern world as his takes still permeate it though I guess.

Lacan is a charlatan, it's nonsense. Badiou is just drivel. Much of the French philosophers are utter shit. Foucault is good and Deleuze. Don't bother with ( ( ( Levinas ) ) ) or ( ( ( Derrida ) ) ) or any of these clowns. imho. just my opinion on it. Don't know why it makes some autists here so upset? ;^)

Ehm, shouldn't you, you know, link to serious *critique* rather than dismiss all those by calling them dumb? I plan to read Deleuze but he is secondary.

well i'll tell you what's wrong with them after you've done your homework. whats the point now? it's not like faggots like Derrida even really acknowledged the tradition either, so why should i give him the time of day rather than just shitting on him for being a pleb who was obsessed with cutting baby dicks and didn't read Hegel? just because the established libcuck intelligentsia highly recc's it? please. im here, basically the only reason im here, to tell you they're fucking wrong. obverse their idiocy in action on campus and in pop culture literally right now

Thanks for the recommendations, but you are one of the biggest faggots this week and month. You probably don't even know what to critique them with but must instead appeal to what is (supposedly) happening as a result of their theories. Am I supposed to dismiss Hegel because he was le epic proto fascist as some like to accuse him of? Or do the same with Heidegger too?

No, you faggot.

My father, who’s a fucking radical centrists got me to read the book Thank You For Being Late. It’s complete liberal horseshit. How can someone ignore social alienation as much as the guy who wrote it does.

well you don't seem very thankful, you more seem like an ungrateful cunt, why? because I touched a nerve. Do you have no respect at all?
Yet I'm the one who consistently knows more than all of you? And has read like 10x this board, which prides itself on its book learning, combined? What are you basing this on, besides me insulting someone you are socially conditioned to view with respect, with an opinion and embarrassing lying bluffing faggots? Was my other advice in any way bad?
If you read carefully, you see I have been dropping the truth bombs. I just parcel it out, why would I post straight knowledge just because a screeching, petulant, angry little faggot demands I spoon feed them? I'm the dean of the vanguard counter-academy bitch, I don't owe you shit. You should be grateful anyone cares enough to talk to you at all, let alone give you the benefit of their wisdom and guidance, at all. Especially seeing as you haven't read ANYTHING.
If you did this, you'd be a mindless idiot, wouldn't you? What's the difference between me counter-memeing a few sacred cows and gimps trying to meme Bordiga? Why does it irritate you so much?
Believe what you want. If you're this dumb, you're too dumb in general, and thus no amount of books will cure you. And you're no good to anyone. It really burns you up that you can recognize my intellect, and can't help but take my advice because YOU KNOW it's good anyway, doesn't it?
WHY do you automatically assume they are good, why do you even know about them to begin with? The only reason is because you bought into liberal petit-bourgeois memes and passively accepted them as correct. I know it hurts when people go against the grain, but this imageboards attract contrarians by nature. Might as well get used to it.

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It's funny how you have to resort to saying "pretentious" over and over etc. It's really all you have. If you must know I'm interested in this intense social prohibition against recognizing your own level of intelligence. So people are forced to route around it with verbiage, like smart-signalling, which amounts to the exact same thing but it fucking irritates the shit out of anyone. So why not just come out and say it? What, in case you get it wrong? You're off by a few points? It makes no sense at all. It's one of the funniest aspects of our culture to me tbh.

...

Stay mad brainlet. Enjoy the gasping at the breadcrumbs in the next thread. :^)

Read, you useless nazbol nigger.

you're literally too dumb to even recognize that i could not say these things without having read them?
then how come i get ty's all the time when i'm not making you feel inadequate and causing massive cringey meltdowns like above?

dw i change posting styles now anyway, this one has ceased to be amusing.

Read the book, tool.

How about instead of laying wind eggs, you provide your assuredly luminary critique here and now so everyone can judge it for themselves.

get back to me when you've read any of the above and maybe i'll consider your recc

'no'

Post it for those who have. I'll read it and judge it to be correct or not because I can. That book is also good for beginners, especially for you.

That guy is not me btw, but keep being full of void.

same comrade

Econocucks BTFO

welcome to the abyss, enjoy your stay!

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Can someone help me out quick? I'd like the PDF debunking cultmarx if anyone has it please.

Right here, friend.

Thanks a lot mate, I'm using it against retards on 4/g/

youre a massive faggot and anyone who takes you seriously is as well

I've been leafing through this mostly. It actually is really good supplementary to the original work, and offers some interesting insights that perhaps one missed the first time through.

Anyone have a good book on the Spanish civil war and the events leading up to it? The only thing I was taught about it in history class was that Franco was Hitler's homeboy and I'd like to know more.

It seems u have posted using the leftcom flag. Ur post has been archived. Thank u.

Man I'm shit at this. Anyone got any tips for converting from .epub to PDF in Calibre?

Finished Dark Deleuze 5 times now…..
Time for Dark Ecology…..

You guys should read the section on IDpol by Culp…

The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden. Shows how majority stuff has been with the working-class movement since forever and how niche consensus stuff is in comparison, whatever Anarchists may tell you.

"Having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card!" -Comrade Arthur

bump

you finished volume 1?

Bump

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Leftists should stop promoting reactionary, outdated, garbage ideology. It's morally bankrupt, & proven wrong by history, geology, archaeology, records, and (kek) pure reason. Bible is utter shit

Has anyone here read this? What did you think of it? I'm at chapter three right now and I think it's pretty good.

t. Zizek

Almost done with Lenin's LWC: An Infantile Disorder. It's extremely good.

Bump. Can't let theory threads go under.

Anyone got recs for good film theory/analysis asides from Zizek?

Been reading A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes. You've probably guessed from the title that he's not a fan of the Reds, but he's got some sick lines like

Das Kapital vol. 1 - Marx: because it's necessary.
Écrits - Lacan: because I need to know how to do/understand Lacanian analysis. So far it's pretty dense, but good.
Workers' Councils - Pannekoek: I really liked all the Situationist material I'd read and I wanted to get a more comprehensive idea of workers' councils and left communism in general because I feel like it's the real revolutionary strain of communism, for modernized countries especially.
Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel: in order to grasp dialectics more fully before I move on to historical materialism or dialectical materialism, but I do have Anti-Duhring lined up afterward. So far it's dense but more graspable than Lacan, probably because I've already read Sartre and Heidegger, who are basically Hegel lite.
Aesthetic Theory - Adorno: I know it's not strictly related to leftism, but it is bound up in leftist theory and it's just a fantastic read and I find myself agreeing with it a lot with regards to my own artistic sensibilities.
The Ego and His Own - Stirner: I feel like Stirner is a second rate philosopher, really, but he does have some interesting ideas and I do think he should be read for what it's worth. Good light read when I feel bogged down by more dense material.

Gonna start Reading Capital soon.

Also doing Optical Media by Kittler. Yes I know Kittler's politics or lack thereof are reactionary as fuck but he's still interesting

*Reading Captial by Althusser and his students

How are you reading all that shit at the same time? Also, assuming you have read the usual Fink intros, how hard is Écrits?

I am the type of reader that likes to start one book and move to another if I get bored of reading the same thing for too long. Then I move back and forth between them until they're done. This method is really nice for thicker books, because I slowly break them down and stay engaged the whole time. I also make use of audiobooks, which moves things along much faster.

Lacan is very difficult, but I have not read any introductions. I'm diving into him with circumstantial knowledge of his terminology through my limited readings of Freud and some other works inspired by Lacan, like Anti-Oedipus and even Sartre to an extent. But I have a very strong mind for these kinds of books, with my love of continental philosophy, and I tend to figure things out through context clues.

Doug shilling Fisher on the Zero Books channel worked on me and Capitalist Realism just arived in the mail yesterday. Im supprised how thin it is, you could easily read it in one day. Also ordered with it Wage labour and Capital / Value, Price and Profit by Marx but I accidentaly ordered two copies so I guess I can give it to a friend who might become radicalized. After reading Wage labour, and Value what should I read by Marx next? Should I just jump into Capital or…?

I too must say that the shilling has had its effect on me. Probably gonna pick it up after I finish The Communist Horizon and Towards a New Socialism.

Germany Tommorow
Marxism and the national question

Bretty good
After this I'll be reading Capital volume 1

Would this be a good book to start reading Bookchin?

The Next Revolution or Social Ecology and Communalism would be better tbh. They're both introductory works, short in length, and give a good look at his most mature ideas. Whereas PSA is a good book, it was also from his less developed period and doesn't really represent the full blossom of his ideas.

its his most utopian and idealist work. Its still good, but if you want more of the stuff that inspired Öcalan and Rojava, Id recomend more of his late works.

Do you guys use any program to view .PDFs and .EPUBs? Or do you just open them in browser?

Okular for PDFs and calibre for EPUB.

How about the Murray Bookchin reader? I'm planning on getting it printed and have listened to a bit and it's good so far tbh.

The Murray Bookchin Reader is great. It's a good collection of his more important works, in addition to a good entry point.

Bump

Age of reason is a refutation of the bible you idiot.

The world would be a much better place if people read capital instead of the bible.

it literally hurts. have to put the book down every few pages

What is Towards a New Socialism? I see it being shilled all the time here, but I've never really managed to read it

It talks about economic planning that uses computers to make efficient planes. It does this pretty well. It also talks about some other stuff which is pretty bad. Defiantly worth a read, but take it with a grain of salt. I just finished reading it.

Can't imagine that whore has anything insightful to say after her endorsement of Clinton last election.

I'm finishing reading "Neoliberalismo, neodesenvolvimentismo, socialismo" from Claudio Katz, an Argentinian marxist economist. It's an analysis of the neoliberal period in Latin America and what came after, Socialism for the Bolivians and Venezuelans, and Neodevelopmentism for Brazil and Argentina. Pretty good overall. Only problem is that the brazilian edition didn't include the bibliography section, so going after what he is referencing is almost impossible.
Also a pic from my to read theory pile. I'm not really sure where to go next after Katz. Probably Marx.

I learned the hard way over a period of years that reading Baudrillard is for masochists

NO JEAN, NOT EVERYONE CAN FIND A COPY OF SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE AND DEATH THAT DOESN'T COST LIKE 50 BUCKS, WOULD YOU DO US A FAVOR AND FUCKING EXPLAIN YOUR TERMINOLOGY FOR ONCE

I've somehow managed to get through Deleuze & Guattari, is it any worse than those two?

If you can stomach Deleuze and Guattari, you can probably stomach earlier Baudrillard

The problem is that Baudrillard just sort of assumes you know what his terminology means to an even greater extent than what I've read of D&G

I mean the BwO is an obscure as fuck concept with an obscure as fuck explanation, but at least there's a goddamn explanation

Also there are times when he really does just write in circles because it's """poetic"""

basically it's like if Virilio took a bunch of mescaline and read Nietzsche

bump

That sounds fun. Virilio was a fun read even if it was a clusterfuck.

As long I can at least infer his point, it should be nothing too hard or weird. It just might involve more work than expected.

bread book?

Clusterfuck is an understatement. Virilio's a fascinating dude with a lot to say, but his prose reads like your drunk conservative aunt's Facebook posts

Rereading das kapital.
Slowly this time, absorbing it day by day.
Pretty dank.

I'm in the middle of reading "A Critique of Pure Tolerance" which contains an essay by Marcuse (that's the last one, but the first essay is very good, it's about criticism of democratic pluralism in the US) about why it may be justified to censor Nazi speech (etc.) to allow the subversive movement of Communism to express itself.

Are there any other philosophical critiques of J.S Mill's liberalism, free speech, the harm principle etc.?

This position seems to be so entrenched that it's favoured by most STEM types and I was even called "a sad, broken human being" and "simply raised incorrectly" for expressing the very idea that it might be justified to censor literal calls to genocide.

Can someone explain the math Cockschott is talking about in the appendix of chapter 2 in Towards a New Socialism.

I'm unsure about that myself. First, the things I understand: Embodied labour content = the amount of labour that actually went into producing something. Don't just think of the work done by the people in a factory who produce things as the labour content of these things, it is also the work done to produce the machines that they work with, the output a machine produces over its lifespan is thought of as containing the labour content of the machine, the labour embodied in the machine is thought of as being transferred from the machine into these things together with the labour from the people working with the machines. This is a standard classical/Marxist description.

Now here the "things" C & C are talking about are skilled workers, which they handle in a similar way as the machine above. The labour teaching them goes into the workers and is transferred to the things these workers produce. So, this does translate to higher prices for the products they produce, but it doesn't translate into higher income for the workers, since they do not pay directly for their own education, this is done by society as a whole.

Education is the work that prepares the person to produce particular things or services, as such it is part of the production cost of these outputs. Now, during studying the work of the teachers is counted (who also had work going into them making them skilled, which is also counted…), but not just that, the student is also seen as actively working in that time, so this is also counted (this part is just normal unskilled labour, phew), and adds to the cost of the products/services the student will later be able to produce/do.

Now comes the weird recursive part. I find the notation horrendous. They use several letters as abbreviations for what should be single values, so an abbreviation looks like several variables to be multiplied. The first approximation of producing that skill was 7600 in the example. This is to be transmitted to the shit the skilled worker produces over time (an estimate of how many annual hours the skilled worker will work and how many years it will take for that knowledge becoming outdated or when the career will end, whatever happens earlier), so this amount of embodied labour is divided by that amount of time. This rate (which is taken to be identical to the transmission rate from teachers to students), the authors say is only a first approximation, and used in turn to re-evaluate the total labour content going into qualifying the student, which is used to re-evaluate the rate, and so on.

The Ego book. It makes me feel like a brainlet at times but its alright.

I want that Spanish version to give it out to my friends tbh. I know a lot of them would have an easier time reading in Spanish.

What is the best edition/version of Das Kapital? Thoughts on David Harvey's companion?

Some Kafka to unwind.

this is from 4chan /his/
mega.nz/#F!dlZlDbqL!TXG5bGvWufONkrQAL7b7jA
theres a section on marxism

what are the best lectures I should watch on Youtube before diving into Marx's critique of political economy? Just to get the terminology and basic context down.

This is perhaps a stupid question, but what should I have read before reading "Towards a New Socialism"?

(So far I've read "The Foundations of Leninism" and "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific").