[Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

so wait do you just pick one or does his name somehow actually translate to something close to ryan

# ? Aug 11, 2021 13:29

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# ? May 24, 2024 13:35

Lady Militant: Apr 8, 2020; The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

so wait do you just pick one or does his name somehow actually translate to something close to ryan

in xi's case it's probably the former?

# ? Aug 11, 2021 13:32

elaboration: Feb 21, 2020

Raskolnikov38 posted:

so wait do you just pick one or does his name somehow actually translate to something close to ryan

the first thing, yeah

# ? Aug 11, 2021 14:16

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 14:43

John Charity Spring: Nov 4, 2009; SCREEEEE

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

this is why lenin rules

# ? Aug 11, 2021 14:54

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

it's the spirit of marxism

# ? Aug 11, 2021 14:58

Brendan Rodgers: Jun 11, 2014

R. Mute posted:

it's the spirit of marxism

https://twitter.com/gobloid3/status/1274369642459467779

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:00

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

marx was a shitposter, engels was a shitposter, lenin was a shitposter and so we are all standing upon the shoulders of giants

Cerebral Bore has issued a correction as of 15:11 on Aug 11, 2021

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:08

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

He was justifiably pissed that self-proclaimed Marxists were ignoring whatever Marx and Engels wrote about the aftermath of the Paris Commune and what lessons should be taken from it. A lot of them were still acting like parliaments were still a viable path to socialism despite all the historical lessons of both the 1848 revolutions and 1871. Choice quote from Engels on the "anti-authoritarian" position of the anarchists.

quote:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All socialists are agreed that the state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and become mere administrative functions of watching over social interests. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social relations that gave both to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.

Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? Therefore, one of two things: either that anti-authoritarians don't know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion. Or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the cause of the proletariat. In either case they serve only reaction.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:09

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

R. Mute posted:

it's the spirit of marxism

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:12

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

John Charity Spring posted:

this is why lenin rules

R. Mute posted:

it's the spirit of marxism

Cerebral Bore posted:

marx was a shitposter, engels was a shitposter, lenin was a shitposter and so we are all standing upon the shoulders of giants

and to prove here's from an earlier post of mine

Karl Marx, Capital posted:

This has allowed the illusion to arise that all commodities can simultaneously be imprinted with the stamp of direct exchangeability, in the same way that it might be imagined that all Catholics can be popes... This philistine utopia is depicted in the socialism of Proudhon, which, as I have shown elsewhere, does not even possess the merit of originality, but was in fact developed far more successfully long before Proudhon by Gray, Bray, and others. Even so, wisdom of this kind is still rife in certain circles under the name of 'science.' No school of thought has thrown around the word 'science' more haphazardly than that of Proudhon.

economists, again big karl posted:

Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. For if people live by plunder for centuries there must, after all, be something there to plunder; in other words, the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It seems, therefore, that even the Greeks and Romans had a process of production, hence an economy, which constituted the material basis of their world as much as the bourgeois economy constitutes that of the present-day world. Or perhaps Bastiat means that a mode of production based on the labour of slaves is based on a system of plunder? In that case he is on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle could err in his evaluation of slave-labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his evaluation of wage-labour?

stop this man, he is about to do a savagery posted:

Classical economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England.

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:13

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Marxism - which, as I have shown elsewhere

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:15

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Something I love about Capital is that the preface to the fourth edition is mostly Engels relitigating some decades-old dispute about whether Marx misquoted William Gladstone. The 19th century equivalent of posting Twitter screenshots to win an argument

# ? Aug 11, 2021 15:32

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; I don't jailbreak the androids, I set them free.

WATCH MARS EXPRESS (2023)

C-SPAM is the one and only one place where purestrain Marxism still exists, all others are revisionists.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 00:06

thatfatkid: Feb 20, 2011; by Azathoth

MeatwadIsGod posted:

He was justifiably pissed that self-proclaimed Marxists were ignoring whatever Marx and Engels wrote about the aftermath of the Paris Commune and what lessons should be taken from it. A lot of them were still acting like parliaments were still a viable path to socialism despite all the historical lessons of both the 1848 revolutions and 1871. Choice quote from Engels on the "anti-authoritarian" position of the anarchists.

Based engels

# ? Aug 12, 2021 00:16

Kaedric: Sep 5, 2000

Karl Marx: Value, Price and Profit posted:

Another preliminary remark I have to make in regard to Citizen Weston. He has not only
proposed to you, but has publicly defended, in the interest of the working class, as he thinks,
opinions he knows to be most unpopular with the working class. Such an exhibition of moral
courage all of us must highly honour. I hope that, despite the unvarnished style of my paper, at its
conclusion he will find me agreeing with what appears to me the just idea lying at the bottom of
his theses, which, however, in their present form, I cannot but consider theoretically false and
practically dangerous.

Our boy supplyin the heat

Karl Marx: Value, Price and Profit posted:

But even then, we might ask, why the will of the American capitalist differs from the will of the
English capitalist? And to answer the question you must go beyond the domain of will. A person
may tell me that God wills one thing in France, and another thing in England. If I summon him to
explain this duality of will, he might have the brass to answer me that God wills to have one will
in France and another will in England. But our friend Weston is certainly the last man to make an
argument of such a complete negation of all reasoning.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 01:31

elaboration: Feb 21, 2020

just finished re-reading liberalism: a counter history and its def still a banger. losurdo is more relevant than ever, i think

edit: i WAS going to post the epub verso gave me when i bought it, but its got my real name/email address all over it, rip.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 01:41

In Training: Jun 28, 2008

Judge Dredd Scott posted:

just finished re-reading liberalism: a counter history and its def still a banger. losurdo is more relevant than ever, i think

edit: i WAS going to post the epub verso gave me when i bought it, but its got my real name/email address all over it, rip.

added this to my reading list thanks

# ? Aug 12, 2021 01:43

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

pretty sure it�s been mentioned in the thread at some point or other, but what�s the general opinion on Political Economy? specifically as a potential recommendation for someone who�s looking to get into more formal ml theory

# ? Aug 12, 2021 06:11

Fortaleza: Feb 21, 2008

gradenko_2000 posted:

Ryan Xi-crest, surely

lol

# ? Aug 12, 2021 06:25

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Comrade Koba posted:

pretty sure it�s been mentioned in the thread at some point or other, but what�s the general opinion on Political Economy? specifically as a potential recommendation for someone who�s looking to get into more formal ml theory

well it is the foundational textbook of modern soviet political economy and as such it has its merits, but unfortunately it lacks the analysis of latter periods about the limitations and structural matters of soviet planning which would've made a far more enriching text

(funny thing: I had three semesters of political economy and that one was expected on the syllabus; we didn't even come close to touching that because the last two are just Capital and deffo needs one whole year if you are going to do all tomes, so it just ended up as suggested reading)

# ? Aug 12, 2021 06:26

MLSM: Apr 3, 2021; by Azathoth

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Started reading The State and Revolution and wow Lenin was a catty bitch. Page 1 and he's spent half of it explaining Engels and the other half taking potshots at rivals.

Read his book the proletarian revolution and the renegade kautsky if you enjoy Lenin�s evisceration of reformists, liberals, and the bourgeois scam of parliamentary democracy all together

# ? Aug 12, 2021 06:28

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Finishing up the Cuba book:

1.

___

This final chapter is about what happened to US-Cuba relations after the "Obama rapproachement":

3.

I've left out a lot, or else I'd just be posting the whole book, but I encourage anyone who finds this material interesting to pick it up. Certainly it's one of the more impactful books I've read this year, and has filled gaps in my knowledge about Cuba with specifics beyond "socialist island good"

# ? Aug 12, 2021 10:05

genericnick: Dec 26, 2012

https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1416215790173396997

# ? Aug 12, 2021 11:02

Comrade Koba: Jul 2, 2007

dead gay comedy forums posted:

well it is the foundational textbook of modern soviet political economy and as such it has its merits, but unfortunately it lacks the analysis of latter periods about the limitations and structural matters of soviet planning which would've made a far more enriching text

cool, good to know. is there any accessible reading material regarding these limitations of the soviet planning system that could work as a complement to it?

# ? Aug 12, 2021 11:06

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

gradenko_2000 posted:

Certainly it's one of the more impactful books I've read this year, and has filled gaps in my knowledge about Cuba with specifics beyond "socialist island good"

Thanks for posting excerpts. It looks like this author also has a book focusing on Che's time at INRA and the Cuban National Bank. Jon Lee Anderson's biography goes into this a bit, but it's always nice to get more detailed info when possible. When you read about how he only took a meager commandante's salary even though his positions in government entitled him to more and how committed he was to cracking down on even the slightest abuses of office it definitely makes you want to learn more about the situation. I know that just within INRA's first year its rural development wing had built more than 500 buildings in the countryside for electrification, plumbing, schools, hospitals, etc.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 13:16

LittleBlackCloud: Mar 5, 2007; xXI love Plum JuiceXx

Judge Dredd Scott posted:

just finished re-reading liberalism: a counter history and its def still a banger. losurdo is more relevant than ever, i think

edit: i WAS going to post the epub verso gave me when i bought it, but its got my real name/email address all over it, rip.

It's very good, but also the most interesting book that puts me to sleep without fail.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Finishing up the Cuba book:
I encourage anyone who finds this material interesting to pick it up. Certainly it's one of the more impactful books I've read this year, and has filled gaps in my knowledge about Cuba with specifics beyond "socialist island good"

second this.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 14:22

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

Comrade Koba posted:

cool, good to know. is there any accessible reading material regarding these limitations of the soviet planning system that could work as a complement to it?

Some posters earlier on (like Top City Homo) had some quality references to that and we occasionally discuss that topic. Unfortunately I do not know if there is any great, consolidated sources on that in English, much of the actual in-depth commentary afaik has never been translated from Russian

to summarize it in an extreme: after a whole loving lot of thinking, Soviet theoreticians argued that, having the necessary computational capabilities, they could implement a centralized decision support system that would solve the logistical problem of large scale domestic production, which afterwards would allow for a centralized, controlled price-equivalent signal mechanism, thus solving the "problem of markets". Get a big enough computer that we can feed our whole production, distribution and consumption data as close to real time as possible, then through principles of political economy, figure out how much labor-time everything requires and from that, derive a price that is applied by the Soviet state. This is the capstone of establishing a truly planned economy; we never got to any later stages of maturity in that sense

so if you keep it in mind that the Soviet state was constantly handicapped by the lack of means of information and technology, making the best of a bad situation and a train car full of institutional and political problems tagged along with it (e.g.: people in distant places not reporting poo poo accurately because they wanted to look good), I think you pretty much are set

# ? Aug 12, 2021 17:06

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The problem was that the USSR fell prey to the siren's call of reimplementing markets before there was the technology to solve the computational problem of a planned economy, and after there was the political will to continue using a planned economy.

(as an aside, I'm trying to finish up "The People's Republic of Walmart" on audiobook and it's a slog because the chapter they have on the USSR is chock-full of SocDem "anti-Stalinist" talking points that's painful to get through)

# ? Aug 12, 2021 17:22

mila kunis: Jun 10, 2011

also, reimplementing markets got them nowhere and tanked their economy because "markets" aren't a catch-all solution that automagically bring prosperity - it only works if you can get foreign investment from capitalists as a result (like the PRC got), and aren't a geopolitical enemy that's barred from it (like the USSR was), and can direct that investment into something useful (not asset bubbles) and institute capital controls to prevent them from looting your country and fleeing at the nearest opportunity (see latin america)

# ? Aug 12, 2021 17:31

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

MLSM posted:

Read his book the proletarian revolution and the renegade kautsky if you enjoy Lenin�s evisceration of reformists, liberals, and the bourgeois scam of parliamentary democracy all together

NGL, that's kind of my least favorite part of the text. His explanation for the "withering away" of the state is really helpful though, even if I have my doubts.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 18:11

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

Judge Dredd Scott posted:

just finished re-reading liberalism: a counter history and its def still a banger. losurdo is more relevant than ever, i think

edit: i WAS going to post the epub verso gave me when i bought it, but its got my real name/email address all over it, rip.

libgen is a treasure trove

# ? Aug 12, 2021 22:25

cenotaph: Mar 2, 2013

gradenko_2000 posted:

The problem was that the USSR fell prey to the siren's call of reimplementing markets before there was the technology to solve the computational problem of a planned economy, and after there was the political will to continue using a planned economy.

(as an aside, I'm trying to finish up "The People's Republic of Walmart" on audiobook and it's a slog because the chapter they have on the USSR is chock-full of SocDem "anti-Stalinist" talking points that's painful to get through)

Yeah I just rolled my eyes through that part when I was reading it.

# ? Aug 12, 2021 22:26

mila kunis: Jun 10, 2011

u guys remember when communism had one of the world's best air forces

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9S3h37GW2g

loud

# ? Aug 13, 2021 19:09

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

I assure you that China probably does have the superior air force. All of our fancy planes mean jack poo poo when they need in air refueling to get anywhere and we can maybe get 6 tankers in the air at the same time.

# ? Aug 14, 2021 00:20

Pentecoastal Elites: Feb 27, 2007

America�s current generation aircraft cost 1.5tn to develop and >300m a pop to actually build and it doesn�t even fuckin work lmao

# ? Aug 14, 2021 01:56

I Miss Snausages: Mar 8, 2005; Volvorific!

tokin opposition posted:

Denouncing Cuba for revisionism over their weed policy everyday

Anyway this thread has made me give up anarchism as a viable political project

Cuban policy on drugs is to keep the DEA from insisting that we must invade Cuba because they traffic drugs! How many countries have the USA "invited" themselves into because of "drug trafficking". It is smart on their part to continue this policy, because, even as there is a movement in the USA to decriminalize drug use, the USA/DEA shows no sign of slowing down intervening (invading) other countries to "stop the flow" of drugs.

# ? Aug 14, 2021 02:02

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Toupee Groupie posted:

Cuban policy on drugs is to keep the DEA from insisting that we must invade Cuba because they traffic drugs! How many countries have the USA "invited" themselves into because of "drug trafficking". It is smart on their part to continue this policy, because, even as there is a movement in the USA to decriminalize drug use, the USA/DEA shows no sign of slowing down intervening (invading) other countries to "stop the flow" of drugs.

The bigger threat to Cuba from the drug trade is that smuggling operations would be vectors for foreign agents to enter the country.

# ? Aug 14, 2021 02:28