Jewel Repetition posted:

You're the one who brought up Democratic primary candidate preferences

GalacticAcid posted:

your mind inhabits a strange world

freckle posted:

only a loving idiot wouldnt like being gaslit

Jewel Repetition posted:

Who's your preferred Dem candidate

quote:

Needless to say this person is a writer. He might be a poet, a novelist, or a writer of film scripts or radio features, for all literary people are very much alike, but let us say that he is a book reviewer. Half hidden among the pile of papers is a bulky parcel containing five volumes which his editor has sent with a note suggesting that they "ought to go well together". They arrived four days ago, but for 48 hours the reviewer was prevented by moral paralysis from opening the parcel. Yesterday in a resolute moment he ripped the string off it and found the five volumes to be PALESTINE AT THE CROSS ROADS, SCIENTIFIC DAIRY FARMING, A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY (this one is 680 pages and weighs four pounds), TRIBAL CUSTOMS IN PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA, and a novel, IT'S NICER LYING DOWN, probably included by mistake. His review--800 words, say--has got to be "in" by midday tomorrow.

Three of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least 50 pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author (who of course knows all about the habits of book reviewers), but even to the general reader. By four in the afternoon he will have taken the books out of their wrapping paper but will still be suffering from a nervous inability to open them. The prospect of having to read them, and even the smell of the paper, affects him like the prospect of eating cold ground-rice pudding flavoured with castor oil. And yet curiously enough his copy will get to the office in time. Somehow it always does get there in time. At about nine pm his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit in a room which grows colder and colder, while the cigarette smoke grows thicker and thicker, skipping expertly through one book after another and laying eachdown with the final comment, "God, what tripe!" In the morning, blear-eyed, surly and unshaven, he will gaze for an hour or two at a blank sheet of paper until the menacing finger of the clock frightens him into action. Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases--"a book that no one should miss", "something memorable on every page", "of special value are the chapters dealing with, etc etc"--will jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet, and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go. Meanwhile another wad of ill-assorted, unappetising books will have arrived by post. So it goes on. And yet with what high hopes this down-trodden, nerve-racked creature started his career, only a few years ago.

http://www.george-orwell.org/Confessions_of_a_Book_Reviewer/0.html

smarxist posted:

i never listened to their pod, aimee is just one of the most insufferable dirtbag left luminaries

smarxist posted:

i never listened to their pod, aimee is just one of the most insufferable dirtbag left luminaries

smarxist posted:

i never listened to their pod, aimee is just one of the most insufferable dirtbag left luminaries

quote:

What [Hegel] calls "negativity" can also be couched in terms of insight and blindness, as the "positive" power of "blindness", of blinding oneself to most of the features of the object, of reducing it to its constitutive key aspects. The greatest power of our mind is not to see more, but to see less in a correct way, to reduce reality to its notional determinations - only such "blindness" generates the insight into what things really are.

The same principle of "less is more" holds for reading the body of a book: in his wonderful How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, Pierre Bayard demonstrates (taking an ironic line of reasoning which is ultimately meant quite seriously) that, in order to really formulate the fundamental insight or achievement of a book, it is generally better not to read it all - too much data only blurs our clear vision. For example, many essay on Joyce's Ulysses - and often the best ones - were written by scholars who had not read the whole book; the same goes for books on Kant or Hegel, where a truly detailed knowledge often only gives rise to a boring specialist exegesis, rather than living insights. The best interpretations of Hegel are always partial: they extrapolate the totality from a particular figure of thought or of dialectical movement. As a rule, it is not a reading of a thick book by Hegel himself, but some striking, detailed observation - often wrong or at least one-sided - made by an interpreter that allows us to grasp Hegel's thought in its living movement.

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

Bernie Sanders posted:

Should America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

At present most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward peoples of the Soviet Union.

...

While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the old race of Europe’s Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races there will come a new breed of men – the first worthy of the name of Man.

One final prophecy: in the 3rd year of the Soviet rule in America you will no longer chew gum!

GalacticAcid posted:

Permanent Reform

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

awwwwww social democracy. i wanted a communist revolution...

communist party: "social democracy can help create conditions leading to communist revolution."

explain how

"some want to make the party so supposedly revolutionary that they would dump the policy of the people’s front, which has been the foundation of the communist party’s strategic approach for over 80 years. at the core of the popular front strategy is the idea of broad-based coalition politics, formulated around a couple of key questions. first, it asks what goal, if won, can change the relationship of forces and open up the possibility for advance. second, it sets out who are the main opponents and possible allies in the struggle to achieve that goal. this means determining who has the self-interest to fight for the goal and assessing their organization, consciousness, and capacity to join in the fight. at a time when masses of people are moving left, challenging corporate power, and viewing the concept of socialism more favorably than we’ve seen in decades—or perhaps ever—there would be no greater mistake than to expend unnecessary effort critiquing people for not being 'left enough.'"

smarxist posted:

i never listened to their pod, aimee is just one of the most insufferable dirtbag left luminaries

Albert Einstein posted:

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Mr. Lobe posted:

ah yes, the popular front, the strategy that has brought us such victories as

uh

Mr. Lobe posted:

ah yes, the popular front, the strategy that has brought us such victories as

uh

gradenko_2000 posted:

the People's Republic of China?

apropos to nothing posted:

the reason popular fronts dont work is because the strategy specifically calls on the communists to basically take up the demands and program of the liberals. its not exactly liquidationist but they dont raise revolutionary consciousness. its fine to work together with liberals and social democrats to oppose the right, but doing so in a way that raises a clearly socialist political pole of attraction. thats the difference between the popular or peoples front and the united front. the united front has socialists work together with the liberals and social democrats but continue to argue their own politics and raise specifically socialist demands

The Ultimate Doge posted:

Which type of front is the DSA

apropos to nothing posted:

the reason popular fronts dont work is because the strategy specifically calls on the communists to basically take up the demands and program of the liberals. its not exactly liquidationist but they dont raise revolutionary consciousness. its fine to work together with liberals and social democrats to oppose the right, but doing so in a way that raises a clearly socialist political pole of attraction. thats the difference between the popular or peoples front and the united front. the united front has socialists work together with the liberals and social democrats but continue to argue their own politics and raise specifically socialist demands

apropos to nothing posted:

its telling that the CPUSA website has no articles, that I can find anyway, on the airport shutdowns and the mass protests that led to the deportation orders to be stopped back in 2017. thats the approach that socialists should be arguing for and using examples currently happening as a point of reference for the broader working class to orient around.

smarxist posted:

i have been literally screaming for everyone to go back to the airports for over a year