Theory thread: pleb edition

reading lists are good, but i propose starting here and letting people decide next. politzer's elementary principles is really just a general, but deep, primer. it teaches you all you need to know to pick up literally anything else and understand what the fuck you're reading.

greeks are interesting for general philosophy, but not really interesting for revolutionary politics. other general lefty primers can be really good though, and we could compile a few essential works from each tendency (marxist, anarchist, councilist, left communist, etc.).

Alexander Spirkin - Fundamentals of Philosophy

Basically what you will read in any other book on basics of dialectical materialism by russian or eastern bloc authors.

Obligatory chapter on debunking theory of racial superiority, and debunking other myths perpetuated by the capitalists.

golibgen.io/view.php?id=1015601

also really good, and offers a soviet marxist equivalent of politzer as an intro, who was a western marxist.

they're necessary for Hegel, which is necessary for Marx tbh.

should at least read plato doing socrates

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How is Politzer a Western Marxist? Have you even read him? He uses Soviet terminology (like autodynamism), calls Trotskyites enemies of Bolshevism and is generally a Stalinist.

this. If you only read one thing in your life it should be Plato.

ecksdee

i did not mean western as in the more social/humanist marxist tendency, rather as a perspective from europe (politzer was french).

debating isn't even in the picture. this is for everyone to get the fucking basics down. and yes, you DO need to get to reading nigga.

bump

bump

Greeks aren't interesting at all.
I took 4 years of the Latin language in high school and we did a whole buncha others shit in there too. They don't have anything to say that hasn't been said more eloquently AND elaborately by, say, Buddha. Philosophies like epicureanism and stoicism are too easily mistakable for "don't do anything about it and just accept it". In fact, I'd argue stoicism IS that. "Fundamentally rational" my ass.

Honestly, I've done my bit of reading but I feel like lurking here and Wikipedia can be just as productive and take far less time. I want to prepare a "general leftist primer to kill all primers" some time in the near future both in English and in Spanish as well as potentially other languages (I know some German) that covers all the bases that core literature do. The problem is that to be a leftist you either have to pretend like you understand leftism when you don't (99% of socialist orgs, including, sometimes, unfortunately, Socialist Alternative, anarchy in general, possibly Leninism) or do hours of reading. People like to extol the values of reading the works the concepts come from but I honestly don't think it does nearly as much good as other people say. This is because the original literature was written to try to convince other academics of their views and had tons of cross-referencing and historical evidence. Our target audience isn't academics who are predisposed to reject new ideas, but normies. If we can get the normies to say "Oh, OK, that makes sense", and outliers to read the work cited, then isn't that good enough?
That's why I feel so strongly on a leftist primer pamphlet prepared in modern vernacular and designed for normies to understand.

Ah, here we see the typical orientalist ignorant disparaging all things "western" because muh eastern insights.

Fuck off man. Buddha has nothing, NOTHING, on Socrates and Plato. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

This. A primer for normies sound like a great idea.

Reading isn't a bad idea. Reading what this board recommends is.

I think that was the point of it all, lol.

what hegel do i start with?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

phenomenology of spirit gets a lot of mentions, any tie-ins to muh socialist revolution?

I think this is a great intro video: youtube.com/watch?v=m6sG1nw0m_w

If you have problems with basic philosophical terms, such as subject or substance, check out plato.stanford.edu/

Most people recommend starting with Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Science of Logic. If you are going to read the Phenomenology, use the A. V. Miller edition, for it contains at the end of the book a paragraph-by-paragraph explanation of the text. Keep in mind that, of course, that these explanations are interpretations as well.

Science of Logic chapter 1. Try reading it without a guide, it is more than possible, but it requires you to think about the fine details of what Hegel says. If you can't make ANY general sense of what is happening, you have bigger issues than Hegel. If it makes no sense, just read secondary literature about it I guess, although just be aware that without reading Hegel and working through his work yourself you don't ever know what he was really about.

Good overview essays on Hegel are "Hegel's Philosophical Development" by Kroner, and H.S. Harris's introduction essay to Hegel's Ladder.

Not him, but thank you lad. I was also looking to start reading Hegel. I'm going to apply one fundamental axiom from Lacanian thought: meaning is imaginary.

If you want a Lacanian reading stick to the interpretation that his logic describes the logic of the signifier.

Said the man who obviously hasn't read all three or is one of those jingoist fucks. I'm Puerto Rican, dude, I have no reason to be one of those self-hating white people who shits on white civilization at every turn.
But yeah dude I guess you're right, Gautama "material conditions suck and here's how to deal with that" Buddha really does have nothing on "no surviving writings" Socrates and "duuh look at this pointless fucking metaphysics wankery" "borderline fascist" ">positivism" Plato.
Technocracy a shit btw.

thx

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I've been through my eastern phase lad, I know exactly what you mean, and you're wrong. You clearly don't understand Plato (or Socrates' roles). Between western and eastern philosophy, I'll choose western every time. The west got us Kant and Hegel, and the east does not compare to the west in that.

racist

I've read this one, though I can't say I know what you mean with the logic of the signifier. Would you explain?

There is nothing about the eastern individual that stops them from having a desire for freedom, good, and truth. Don't be mad that the material conditions, however, did not make them the leaders of such thought because instead they decided to wank around pre-kantian systems for thousands of years. They never had a Descartes and Newton to spark the autism to connect knowledge to technology and government.

How can you be a lefty and at the same time realize that the east and nonwhites in general are fucking worthless?

Give me one person who wasn't a white that wrote any of your beloved socialist theory. Why don't you embrace the fact that whites are superior?

Lenin, Mao, and Thomas Sankara have far more brain capacity than you and your bald allies.

plenty of Indian communist theorists, writers, leaders, activists, poets in this one:
youtube.com/watch?v=cVvThDX4bbQ

This is what Western Marxism is:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
Just because he was French does not make him not-Soviet Marxist. He was a faithful Stalinist and only wrote Stalin-approved propaganda.

Just read a "very short introduction", unless you are interested in summoning succubi you won't need more.

BUMP. Someone (I think Marxhead) shared that book in PDF here as well many months ago. Reading is was easy for a shitter like me and got me into reading more and more. Would recommend. If everyone on this god forsaken board read that shit we'd honestly be much more respectable intellectually.

Jacobin's abc's of socialism is bretty good
s3.jacobinmag.com/issues/jacobin-abcs.pdf

Someone hasn't read The Republic.
Positivism is part of a more general ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, notably laid out by Plato and later reformulated as a quarrel between the sciences and the humanities,[7] Plato elaborates a critique of poetry from the point of view of philosophy in his dialogues Phaedrus 245a, Symposium 209a, Republic 398a, Laws 817 b-d and Ion.[8] Wilhelm Dilthey popularized the distinction between Geisteswissenschaft (humanities) and Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences).[9]
Proto-positivist is more accurate but still.

No, I clearly do.
I won't argue with you on Kant being the most influential figure in modern philosophy, and Hegel being on some high level shit, but how much of what he had to say is relevant to day to day life?

The fundamental question of humanity is "why". It can be divided into two parts- "why are things the way they are" (the external) "why should I do anything" (the internal). There's "why do things make sense or not make sense" somewhere in there as well including logic and ethics but I digress. Laozi, Confucius (who I hate) and Buddha attempted to answer the second question. Hegel, Plato and Kant tried to answer the first question and some of the third. And having been largely replaced by the more material science, I see little use for philosophy of the first kind.

Basically, I think we have differing ideas on what it means to be "good philosophy". I enjoy eastern philosophers more because they're more relevant to my interests. Though the third question I mentioned definitely interests me, I feel like it too can come more naturally and be more self evident than the second question.