Answering Questions from Anonymous Leftypol Users | Zero Books

Turd Worldism = anything the West does is evil, anything the Third World does is good

Has Roo ever talked about Mugabe?

As the user who asked the second question, I gotta say, I couldn't have imagined a more thorough and satisfying answer tbh.

Here you go, I was bored so I've even formatted it nicely for you. BTW, you can see the auto-generated captions for any YouTube video by clicking the "More" button under the video and then click "Transcripts"

This video is just going to be me answering some questions that some anonymous users at Holla Forums sent my way. They sent me many more questions than the ones I'm answering but I've selected the ones I felt like could handle and that I had time for. While I answer these questions you can watch me play punch-out.
First off, the feeling you have now that you you're nothing and you should be everything, that strange feeling you have of being both forever young and already ancient, that struggle to both avoid adulthood and become somebody important; well that never goes away, but only changes key as you get older. Second if you're under 18 then you're not reading theory for a grade probably, and you're not reading theory as a way to succeed inside the already existing world or the world of academia so don't sweat it when you stumble over stuff. Maybe read a book you're interested in with a friend maybe start a reading group or start a YouTube channel or podcast with a friend and discuss what you've read you might interview people who claim to already know the material. Crowdsource this thing. The whole world is at your fingertips but don't just rely on arguing on Holla Forums or Twitter. Also what you don't have to do is look for an already established right answer. But what does help is if you get acquainted with sort of the precursors to left theory before you dive in on the leftist stuff.
I recall going to a community college library in
the summer of maybe 1990 when I was 19 and spending the afternoon trying to read Derrida. It was impossible. All I got was a sense that Derrida was a whole lot smarter than I was and that the world of academia was for grown-ups who lived in Europe or New York City and it wasn't for a kid who'd grown up watching the Muppets and happy days like I had. So what I recommend is allowing yourself to start with something like Donald Palmer's does the center hold and just don't be ashamed of getting those philosophy comic books either. Then when you're ready to read Capital be prepared to be bored, drink coffee, go slow, and really: find a friend to read
with.
This isn't one question but a whole bunch of questions. So overall I agree with much Pistone who critiques traditional Marxism as conceiving of the struggle against capitalism in terms of seeking political power for the working class rather than in terms of overcoming capitalist relations and commodity production. I suspect that the Frankfurt School philosophers fell prey to this traditional Marxism and under theorized capital itself and especially under theorized how commodity production and the consequent law of value had transformed or transforms culture. Perhaps this all comes from Lukács who framed the problem of overcoming capitalism as a problem of establishing a working class consciousness, rather than as establishing a new material basis and practice for production. Pistone claims that the origin of the difficulty can be found in Engels writings (that might be true). As wannabe Marxist I'm not exactly sure but I do think that political struggle, while necessary, won't be sufficient. I don't think changing property relations alone will solve the problem either. We'll have to overcome commodity production if we want to get beyond capitalism.

I think Zizek is brilliant when it comes to Hegel and Lacan, and pretty bad when it comes to Marx and political prescriptions. Whatever institutional powers come along or that we managed to form in order to mitigate or control the various global crises that we're facing, they'll all be limited by capital unless we overturn capitalist production and stop relying on the exploitation of labour and its attendant value to dictate what's produced, how its produced, and how its distributed. That said, Zizek's arguments are probably meant rhetorically. What he's pointing out is how deficient the center-left really is; how empty that kind of moralistic positions are. Everyone wants to avoid big collective projects because these might impose limits on people's personal ambitions, or their expression. Everybody wants to be a revolutionary without having to have that revolution. And really I'm no different I guess, but by pointing out the need of international planning and need for international planning and mass action Zizek gets a little closer than most other liberals at naming the scale of our difficulty, even if his stance towards capitalist production is itself mostly reformist.
I think right wing acceleration ISM is a fairly empty concept. It strikes me as less interesting than Alvin Toffler's future shock, a book that was published when Nick land was eight.
Clip of Alvin Toffler speaking: "In the course of my work which makes me just about every corner of the globe I see many aspects of a phenomena which I'm just beginning to understand. Modern technologies that can see the degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams, but this technology is exactly that for the heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety and time of stress and with all our sophistication we are in fact the victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims of shock; of future shock."
At least Alvin toffler's book amounts to a list of observations about real technological developments, and some of the consequences of those changes, of those those technologies and the social consequences of them. Nick land's accelerationism just aims at evoking some of the feelings you get from reading theory without explicating the actual theories or pinning down any real understanding. For instance in his quick and dirty introduction to accelerationism Land writes:
"commercialization and industrialization mutually excite each other in a runaway process from which modernity draws its gradient. Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche were among those to capture important aspects of the trend. As a circuit is incrementally closed or intensified it exhibits ever greater autonomy or automation"
Land treats Marx and Nietzsche like their pop stars working in the same sub-genre rather than like two theorists on different sides of a battle over how to understand and reshape the world. He says a lot less than he appears to. On the other hand a left accelerationist perspective doesn't bother me quite the same way. But I'd say that rather than think in terms of speed we'd be better off embracing the abstract and quantitative aspects of modern life, if only to repurpose and overcome them. Overall I think it's important to remember that Marx was in many ways a fan of capitalism. But rather than merely speeding up or intensifying capitalist processes, the radical task is to conceive of a means to get beyond these processes. I think organizing working-class political struggle have to be a big part of that transformation or that transcendence, even if gaining political control as a class isn't the ultimate goal.
Everything that appears in this system has to find someplace within this system in order to appear. So making Marx a subject in the university, a subject that one can develop some academic expertise around, that's the only outcome possible other than revolution on the one side or book-burning on the other. As to communicating with working masses, I think that something we asked ourselves so we don't have to figure out what we think. I mean, before we worry about whether we can talk to the working man we should have a better idea of what we want to tell them or about what we believe. And by the way I consider myself to be part of the working class. So what the fuck?

I don't have strong feelings about are these PDFs. The whole time I've worked in publishing they've been out there. This is, you know, going on. People trade PDFs of books that they want to read especially on the left. I'd prefer if you check the books out from your local library instead, and if they don't have the books and ask them to get the books. But y'know it doesn't matter what I think.
I interviewed Jodi Dean a couple times back when I did a podcast called Diet Soap. She had a pretty good critique of lifestyleism and localism, but I was disappointed that she wasn't that interested in Marx himself. It's interesting to me that she seemingly moved from being a critic of the politics of resistance back in when Bush was in office into being in a big advocate of the resistance now that Trump is in office. But I'd be glad to interview her again. It would probably be a bit more like a debate this time.
Adrian Johnston is a friend to Zizek, and I've had him on I had him on the Diet Soap podcast a few times as well I think he's pretty good on philosophy, and I'd love to talk to him again. Actually I should write him. I wouldn't turn to him so much for advice on politics or revolutionary strategy, just more for help understanding, especially Badou who I'd like to know more about.

So anyway those are my answers to the few questions I chose to take on from lefty poll thanks for asking and I hope you've enjoyed this video

He didn't answer enough questions. He was kinda too careful on what he said too. Do want to see that debate with Jodi Dean. Didn't realize she was a #resistance lib now.

Another user here who strongly prefers reading, thanks for the transcript.
That's probably Moishe Postone.

Jodi Dean = psychobabble garbage, as is all of "Marxism" inspired by Freud, Lacan, or Reich.

Podcasts mentioned in vid:

Adrian Johnston - Zizek's ontology:
podomatic.com/podcasts/dietsoap/episodes/2010-10-14T00_49_13-07_00
part2:
podomatic.com/podcasts/dietsoap/episodes/2010-10-21T12_12_50-07_00

Topics: ontology, epistemology, Berkeley, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Zizek…

Diet Soap Podcast #172: The Subject of Capitalism (Jodi Dean)
youtube.com/watch?v=Bev04ZJpwAs

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Did it ever occur to you that adults might not be watching cartoons?

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Going to start watching it now, did he answer whether he would rather be 100ft tall or as smart as Stephen Hawking? No spoilers.

kekked @ this pic under the first question

Stallman has a favourite anime.

I heard famous people actually take a shit every now and then. It's not confirmed, tho.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with anime.
At its best, it can be almost as good as true kino, and at its worst, no worse than an underfunded late-afternoon TV movie.
I'm watching Kill la Kill at the moment and I enjoy everything from the fan service and stupid cutesy jokes to the intrigue and cliffhangers, and there is nothing you can do to stop me nerd

did someone threaten your freedumbs?

oh wow

people like this faggot are so cancerous. lain has had reactionaries on first for good discourse, and in the case of land he wanted to show how he got there (his reactionary politics) via his inherently leaning-on-reactionary vitalist theory.

tfw got so caught up in that cancerous comment i forgot to say this was great and that we in large part have that user to thank for this.

If you don't want to deplatform fascists and unsubscribe from Zero books you are a fascist sympathizer (fascist-enabler the very least) and I you need to be deplatformed as well and I will unsubscribe from your channel, block you on twitter and report your facebook for not using your real name.

bash the fash

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still there for me.

It's not there for me. And I'm even subscribed to xac's channel. I have no fucking idea how this can happen, but youtube is a mess.

He put in a lot of effort to make the video and audio actually have additional value over simply reading a response. Just watch it tbh.

Id watch him if he wasn't such a bore.

Like nigga be reading a word a mile smdh.

smh

Je suis français, espèce d'idiot.
Et non, c'est juste que tu peux vraiment rien faire mis à part te plaindre sur ce forum spécialisé dans les mangues thaïlandaises si ça t'embêtes que je regarde Kill le Kill.
LOL

I don't know what to say. This guy just did us a massive fucking favor; I guess we better cherish this guy.

He has made several videos about Rick and Morty.

That Google AI-powered subtitle system have become a lot more accurate than it was 2 or 5 years ago though and it's pretty scary, tbqh

these are the top 10 questions from the poll we had.

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nvm looks like he went for the questions he found most interesting then, rip.

Technically a sitcom. Animea are for children, like my little poney.

Shots fired and lel, Doug's been reading the critiques of Harvey's shit-tier understanding of Marx.

The great irony is that all those text and speech recognition and generation technologies have, as their end goal, automatized censorship.

Are you ready for the future?

What's Stallman's favorite anime?

Bash la fash is one of my favorite Anime
Although Gurren Lagann is better

You're retarded

Kill La Kill started strong, but the second cour was a let down. KLK stands out more than anything with how well they managed their budget. Fucking love Trigger. Gurren Lagann is good.

kys

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Revolutionary Girl Utena

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Foreal? If so he has god-tier taste.

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do you have more on Harvey? I'm not sure Zizek&Karatani deal with the problem from the perspective the author presents.

newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_1_getting_marx_wrong

Not sure about Karatani and Zizek either, since that seems to sit more in the philosophical realm which I'm admittedly weak on, however their representation of value as anything but a structural abstraction seems flawed from my perspective.

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Dexter's Lab is old as fuck. It came out when I was a kid and I'm 31.

Why wouldn't anyone defend it? It wasn't a bad cartoon.

Even the author highlights that they (z&k) are talking about Kantian antinomy which, as far as I can tell, is an attempt to solve the representational problem in the LTV. His critique on Harvey seems valid, on the point, z&k's a bit scattered.

BTW, any response from Harvey?

Yeah, so it's mainly philosophical. Figured I wouldn't be too useful on that.

Not as far as I know. After his whole Reading Capital stunt he's mostly been off the map on Marx, going back to his geography work.

We should thank Doug somehow.

Yeah, I just looked up his book output. After his "reading Kapital" series he denigrated himself to a book that deals w his "how I became a radical" shit…

So, if Harvey is not capable to respond to his critiques he goes down the toilet…

As for Z&K: I'm intrigued.

Two more on Harvey by Kliman on two separate issues Harvey fails on:
newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_2_getting_profitability_wrong
newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_3_a_rejoinder

Again don't take what I have to say on Z&K seriously. It's clearly not in my league (yet, perhaps I'll get closer sometime?), and unlike Harvey Zizek at least to me is more than interesting and useful in other domains to me.

thx. btw: Zizek had a common platform with Harvey recently.

Doug Lain vs. Jodi Dean ???

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bump for potential

bump for
JODI vs. DOUG

benp

adding some ones I like that haven't been posted

Citations Needed
Discourse Collective
Struggle Session
Champagne Sharks

Did leftypol cause debate?

nigga stole my bike