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the famously literate 1930s/1940s chinese peasantry
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Feb 25, 2021 09:22
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im sure the nationalists deleted the ability to read from the populace to stop mao, and it had nothing to do with centuries of poverty and mismanagement by the decayed imperial government
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Feb 25, 2021 10:57
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syria
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Feb 26, 2021 06:37
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/dbessner/status/1364619471499968512?s=19 According to Harvey and the intro to Capital itself, Capital was always intended to be read by working class people (more specifically skilled labourers). Takes like these just make me think that people like the author have the greatest contempt for the working class. It reminds me of Catholic Clergy who discouraged their laity from reading the Bible (might be getting my history wrong here, not Catholic). The Twitterati left loving suuuuuuuuuckkks. Edit: He's a Jacobin Editor... I swear they were better 4 or 5 years ago. I guess they wedded themselves to hard to electoralism.
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Feb 27, 2021 01:12
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ToxicAcne posted:According to Harvey and the intro to Capital itself, Capital was always intended to be read by working class people (more specifically skilled labourers). Takes like these just make me think that people like the author have the greatest contempt for the working class. It reminds me of Catholic Clergy who discouraged their laity from reading the Bible (might be getting my history wrong here, not Catholic). I don’t think Danny Bessner is whomever you think he is.Why would you say he is married to electoralism? Is that what you take away from this article, for instance, or anything else he’s written or said? https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/trump-capitol-riot-fascist-coup-attempt
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Feb 27, 2021 01:30
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ToxicAcne posted:According to Harvey and the intro to Capital itself, Capital was always intended to be read by working class people (more specifically skilled labourers). Takes like these just make me think that people like the author have the greatest contempt for the working class. It reminds me of Catholic Clergy who discouraged their laity from reading the Bible (might be getting my history wrong here, not Catholic). Nah your fine, the church always discouraged reading the actual text of the bible. Thats what priests were for. Normal people wouldn't have had the "education" to "understand" the text.
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Feb 27, 2021 01:38
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tbf when they got to read it they all went insane
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Feb 27, 2021 01:40
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mawarannahr posted:I don’t think Danny Bessner is whomever you think he is.Why would you say he is married to electoralism? Is that what you take away from this article, for instance, or anything else he’s written or said? Honestly it was just a knee jerk reaction to seeing the Jacobin thing which isn't really charitable. Edit: Looking at his writing, I've actually read alot of his articles without realizing, nevertheless the take is still bad. Southpaugh posted:Nah your fine, the church always discouraged reading the actual text of the bible. Thats what priests were for. Normal people wouldn't have had the "education" to "understand" the text. This is basically what he's saying. ToxicAcne fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 01:45
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idk. capital is supposed to be accessible, however comma i dont think everyone needs to read it. i think everyone should, but that's not need. if you're an organizer it's your job to take all of these pieces of theory and condense them into practice, and then get other people to do it. It's not your job to roll your eyes and mutter about it not being your job to educate people or whatever excuse liberals have this week when people arent automatically their clone. not that I think anyone here was arguing that.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:20
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Larry Parrish posted:idk. capital is supposed to be accessible, however comma i dont think everyone needs to read it. i think everyone should, but that's not need. if you're an organizer it's your job to take all of these pieces of theory and condense them into practice, and then get other people to do it. It's not your job to roll your eyes and mutter about it not being your job to educate people or whatever excuse liberals have this week when people arent automatically their clone. not that I think anyone here was arguing that. yeah i mean chick tracts are more effective than telling people to read deuteronomy
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Feb 27, 2021 02:25
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it could always be translations I’ve read, but maybe Marx was a great thinker but a meh writer? everything I’ve read by Engels was much more accessible and clear to me e: same w/Lenin now that I think about it
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Feb 27, 2021 02:31
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Larry Parrish posted:idk. capital is supposed to be accessible, however comma i dont think everyone needs to read it. i think everyone should, but that's not need. if you're an organizer it's your job to take all of these pieces of theory and condense them into practice, and then get other people to do it. It's not your job to roll your eyes and mutter about it not being your job to educate people or whatever excuse liberals have this week when people arent automatically their clone. not that I think anyone here was arguing that. Yeah, this is my take as well. It's the idea that you should leave Marx to the academics that pisses me off. If somebody decides to take the time and effort to read some of the older, foundational texts, they should be encouraged not told that their stupid peasant brain won't understand it.
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Feb 27, 2021 02:39
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ToxicAcne posted:Honestly it was just a knee jerk reaction to seeing the Jacobin thing which isn't really charitable. He gave some more detail upon David Harvey’s response: https://twitter.com/dbessner/status/1365026025839550465?s=20 I think that’s a defensible position, and he was speaking as it applies to teaching undergraduates. I am interested in the question of whom reading Capital helps in 2020, though. Marx may have intended the text to be accessible to workers 150 years ago (but even then each of the revised prefaces apologize for the complexity of the earthly chapters in some way or another) in book form. He welcomed turned it into a serial format for easier consumption by workers. How crucial is fidelity to Marx’s words as expressed 150 years ago to actually achieving the goals he lays out? E: Tired and poorly expressed. What’s been bugging me is that besides the obvious truth of language changing over such time, there are also the facts that book readership is in massive decline everywhere, that our working hours are going up, that any remaining spare attention is consumed by media, etc., so a book is not the same sort of socio-technical object that it was then and being really attached to the literal words of the book “because Marx intended it to be accessible” seems like essentialist nonsense. mawarannahr fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 02:49
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Feb 27, 2021 03:03
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i think one of marx's problems was that he wasn't actually that good at math, such that when he explained math he did it in a really baroque and cumbersome way to make absolutely sure the idea was gotten across but which ended up taking way more words than it needed to. he also had funny ideas about equal signs
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Feb 27, 2021 03:10
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wage labor and capital is basically the pamphlet version of capital and all most people need to read
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Feb 27, 2021 03:38
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Trash Ops posted:wage labor and capital is basically the pamphlet version of capital and all most people need to read hmm I will look into this. thank you
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Feb 27, 2021 03:40
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GalacticAcid posted:syria Disagree
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Feb 27, 2021 04:20
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ToxicAcne posted:This is basically what he's saying. And having been raised catholic, I'm backing him up.
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Feb 27, 2021 04:43
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wage labor and capital is funny because marx wrote it much earlier in his life than he wrote capital itself so he waxes poetic about the essential human species-being or whatever instead of getting to the good stuff we're all here for, namely how much iron trades for how much linen
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Feb 27, 2021 04:43
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that said, wage labor and capital contains this incredible line: "If the silk-worm's object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker."
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Feb 27, 2021 05:02
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lol that's good
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Feb 27, 2021 05:05
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ive tried to read capital and it was really hard to penetrate, even with a study group. maybe my brain sucks. lenin’s shorter works were a lot more effective for me
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Feb 27, 2021 05:23
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I've never quite read through Capital yet but can confirm Wage Labour and Capital owns
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Feb 27, 2021 05:56
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Not sure what it's like in the US, but in Australia an alarmingly large percentage of our adult population has poor literacy skills (as in, unable to fill out basic forms, or read a pamphlet). The idea you could hand your average person here a copy of the capital and expect them to get anything out of it is probably not realistic.
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Feb 27, 2021 06:11
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i've read half of capital vol 1 so far and its extremely poorly written. its not like marx was incapable of writing well, 18th brumaire owns.
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Feb 27, 2021 06:18
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if only Marx could write as clearly and effectively as the great communicators of our age, like Dave Barry
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Feb 27, 2021 06:39
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mila kunis posted:i've read half of capital vol 1 so far and its extremely poorly written. its not like marx was incapable of writing well, 18th brumaire owns. it’s German language brain. sentences just go on and on and on
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Feb 27, 2021 06:49
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once you become communist enough you realize marx's writing is actually great, even and perhaps especially in capital
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Feb 27, 2021 07:08
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Ferrinus posted:once you become communist enough you realize marx's writing is actually great, even and perhaps especially in capital tbqf Capital in its literary merits is one amazing work and there's much to be said about Marx's skill as such, because he is one hell of a writer. One of the things he did during his "breaks" at the British Library was to read literature and do critical readings to practice his own writing skills (he loved Shakespeare, for example) and imho I think it is there where the disconnect happens about reading Capital, because it seems (in my experience ofc) that people willing to engage with it as if it was a work of literature tend to get it, at least much better than the people who come with a "this is an extremely serious work" attitude. There are many skilled uses of metaphor and allegory to illustrate great points which are quite memorable: quote:As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. quote:In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. also, of course, "Accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!", which is an amazing bit. Capital is chock full of these and honestly, in terms of practical approach to daily life, it is its literary quality that makes all the difference. Things how the people at the helm of a company are vampires, that the things we buy become fantastic objects (like a bag becoming a Louis Vutton bag) as if by a magic spell because of how our society currently works, or how the necessity to save up money is a form of mortification because it deprives us of using money to do nice things for ourselves, thus denying life itself, this is the stuff that gets remembered, that strikes a chord, you know?
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Feb 27, 2021 07:38
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Yeah, the literary stuff is the most powerful and memorable writing in Capital. The math stuff is overhyped anyways. It becomes much more infrequent later on. By the way how do you guys find Leo Panitch? I'm reading The Making of Global Capitalism and it's pretty interesting. He argues that the seeds of Neoliberalism were pretty much baked into Bretton Woods and the New Deal. I also like that he takes the cultural and institutional influence on Europe during this period seriously. Online you often see people acting like the US Post WW2 were a bunch of yokels who bumbled their way into hegemony (which I guess is a legacy of bitter Europeans).
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Feb 27, 2021 07:51
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ToxicAcne posted:According to Harvey and the intro to Capital itself, Capital was always intended to be read by working class people (more specifically skilled labourers). Takes like these just make me think that people like the author have the greatest contempt for the working class. It reminds me of Catholic Clergy who discouraged their laity from reading the Bible (might be getting my history wrong here, not Catholic). the whole thing is stupefying in its length in that every thing is laid out bare and is explained upon to the point of Capital having several volumes and imposing density
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Feb 27, 2021 08:30
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Victory Position posted:the whole thing is stupefying in its length in that every thing is laid out bare and is explained upon to the point of Capital having several volumes and imposing density millions of people have memorized the house legacy of the baratheons
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Feb 27, 2021 08:48
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dead gay comedy forums posted:people willing to engage with it as if it was a work of literature tend to get it, at least much better than the people who come with a "this is an extremely serious work" attitude I think I struggle with this is in general, and the us education system certainly didn’t help
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Feb 27, 2021 08:59
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i feel like a piece of poo poo that in a world where people were working like 12 hour days and were way more oppressed, they were able to really kick off socialist revolutions, and i'm the alienated peon of a 9 hour work day, 10 hours with the commute, and i can't really read Capital because my brain is too hosed up from all of the insane everyday poo poo. i should try harder but drat i hate my job and hate everything around it. i just want to sleep when i get home. politics is very marginal to surviving and i feel like if i stopped caring about politics i'd be happier, but i know i will never stop caring about politics
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Feb 27, 2021 09:14
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i say swears online posted:millions of people have memorized the house legacy of the baratheons I've never seen or read A Song of Ice and Fire
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Feb 27, 2021 09:18
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THS posted:i feel like a piece of poo poo that in a world where people were working like 12 hour days and were way more oppressed, they were able to really kick off socialist revolutions, and i'm the alienated peon of a 9 hour work day, 10 hours with the commute, and i can't really read Capital because my brain is too hosed up from all of the insane everyday poo poo. i should try harder but drat i hate my job and hate everything around it. i just want to sleep when i get home. politics is very marginal to surviving and i feel like if i stopped caring about politics i'd be happier, but i know i will never stop caring about politics it's not your fault and the conditions on the ground -- i.e., the insane everyday poo poo that happens these days, which is actually much more totally oppressive in a world-encompassing way -- have changed sufficiently since then that you are in no position that you should feel bad about it nor is it politically meaningful to compare your personal conduct poorly against people who are (a) no longer living and (b) would accept you fine as a leftist.
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Feb 27, 2021 09:35
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my calculation is that every day, i work 9 hours, there is a "lunch break" and two "15 minute breaks" in that - those don't happen, obviously. it's a half hour commute every way. so with ten hours, it takes an hour to get ready for work, so waking up is 6am. shower, make a healthy breakfast - i used to squeeze this into 30 minutes but i can't really do a quick wakeup anymore. i guess i could, but i don't want to. i'm 32. it's yogurt and nuts then i'm at work and let me tell you, it sucks rear end i don't ever take real time off during the day for lunch, because lunch is pointless. i am always, 11am-1pm- that is when everything is the craziest, so i just eat at my desk and fix poo poo i try to exercise and run an hour a day, which i try to do most days, so after that and cooking a dinner, that's two hours. i think that's now two hours to myself to just hang out and be human?? before i go to sleep. then my weekends are alright, or at least they were alright before Covid. now they are poo poo. i miss going out and going to bars and clubs, i miss seeing my friends. it's so loving depressing. but at least i'm not on the job and i can try to play a videogame for a couple days. but i don't even like videogames that much. i can't really focus on a videogame i only play on the weekends, from monday-friday i forget why i cared about it. i always have to start over again they tell you you need 8 hours of sleep - well i really need 9 hours to quiet the voices in my head that are really loud when i'm awake about how much this poo poo sucks. and i do sleep ok, i don't really have sleep problems. it takes me an hour to get read yfor work, so waking up at 6am. shower, make a healthy breakfast - i used to squeeze this into 30 minutes but i can't really do a quick wakeup anymore. i guess i could, but i don't want to. i'm 32. it's yogurt and nuts
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Feb 27, 2021 09:54
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yeah it sucks. I forget what it’s like to enjoy things or want to do stuff, I only look forward to sleep anymore lol
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Feb 27, 2021 10:14
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indigi posted:if only Marx could write as clearly and effectively as the great communicators of our age, like Dave Barry The problem is that he actually can, and did for 18th brumaire. But for that capital he wanted to show of his hegelian credentials.
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Feb 27, 2021 11:14
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