(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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MLSM posted:lol
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Aug 8, 2022 04:53
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MLSM posted:After reading Marx, there is literally no going back intellectually, even if you want to; he irreversibly undermined and destroyed both bourgeois propaganda and bourgeois economics on their own terms with their logic. Why do you think bourgeois ideologies such as liberalism and and reactionary ones like fascism alike have taken up arms (sometimes together!) for capital/capitalism against socialism since the early 20th century?  All joking aside it really is like a kind of counter programming. It feels strange to admit it, but I think a lot of my anxiety about politics evaporated when I really started to grasp Marx's framework of political economy. I actually feel like one of the most important tasks for anyone that wants to advance a revolutionary agenda in the imperial core is to figure out how to advance the deprogramming of ordinary people from the liberal world view. Its grip on people's thinking is so strong, and circumscribes their actions so potently, I almost think it's the most important first step. I also think this could be this is a unique condition of the times. The contemporary media and culture environment seems unprecedented in its power to alter people's perceptions of reality in a way that makes the stuff from the mid 20th century look like kid's stuff. Like, in 1917 they didn't have to deal with the same scale of reality warping power of the mass media like we do. Am I saying posting is praxis? Uhh, maybe? It just doesn't seem like any Marxist political project can thrive in the imperial core without first carving out a space for itself in "the discourse." Just look at how ambivalent people are to something as self-serving as labor union power. You have to shatter that illusion that there can be nothing else. Got to treat that like a discreet front in the class war. * disclaimer, i'm american and this is referring to conditions in america. not trying to speak for the periphery. i'm sure american narratives don't have as much purchase for people getting crushed by the imperial boot.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:21
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Lasting Damage posted:I actually feel like one of the most important tasks for anyone that wants to advance a revolutionary agenda in the imperial core is to figure out how to advance the deprogramming of ordinary people from the liberal world view. i think a big part of it would be making marxist theory actually readable / watchable, maybe with stick figure cartoons for dumbies like me. i bounced off capital vol 1 three times before i finally steeled myself, and it had so many good insights but was written in such a shoddy and haphazard way that it was immensely frustrating. people recommended stuff like ben fine's "marx's capital" as a 'digestible' summation of marxist economics and it was even worse than the original marx with the run on sentences and jargon heavy anti-explanations. didactic, step by step youtubes or readable guides in simple english/language of your choice that you could just link to people would be nice
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Aug 8, 2022 09:31
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Lasting Damage posted:
i think actually changing people's minds in a statistically non-trivial way would require either a) a complete societal breakdown like 1917 or b) lots of funding, some kind of state or other apparatus running things in an organized way that's able to convey these things. for eg, the smartphone basically revolutionized access to information in regions in the global south, you no longer needed a personal computer or have your access to news and views filtered through the local news establishment, and reactionaries had the funding and organization and were ready to pounce and directly contributed to the rise of people like modi in india (plus oligarch control of a completely privatized traditional media). billionaire funding for this kinda stuff had already rotted brains across the rich countries, and there is no institutional left ready or capable of doing anything similar
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Aug 8, 2022 09:39
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the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is a tendency. the fact that it does not fall all the time does not disprove the theory Piketty is an idiot
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Aug 8, 2022 09:54
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in the talk and book linked upthread, Prashad discusses this a bit and emphasizes that: a) this is the work of long years, e.g. we can’t think in terms of quarterly progress b) marxists should be performing acts of humanity in their community to eventually build power - he cites the example of Kerala where the communist party organized relief efforts during the early days of covid: https://mronline.org/2021/01/26/kerala-communists-serve-the-people-look-to-youth-and-women/
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Aug 8, 2022 10:16
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Aug 8, 2022 14:25
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mila kunis posted:i think a big part of it would be making marxist theory actually readable / watchable, maybe with stick figure cartoons for dumbies like me. i bounced off capital vol 1 three times before i finally steeled myself, and it had so many good insights but was written in such a shoddy and haphazard way that it was immensely frustrating. I have found the very same in regards to the denser texts e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Even while reading I constantly had to go back because I understood 0 of what I had read. I still haven't finished capital for the very same reasons. Maybe this is a completely unfounded problem but I don't really trust people outside of here, and people like David Harvey to simplify the texts. People like to take theory, and twist it for their goofy understanding of the world. V_V
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Aug 8, 2022 14:33
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one reason the old marxist texts are difficult to understand is because they're introducing both a method and a theory at once. if you've ever had a chance to read newton's principia, it's the same kind of problem: what he is thinking and how he is thinking are at once novel, which is both what makes the work so seminal, but also so difficult to understand; an academic work through and through. already by the next generation, e.g., lenin, the method and language had become much more developed, people had had a chance to grow up with it, which freed the writers to focus on what they are thinking, on theory rather than method. the difficulty of teaching method, let alone independently learning, is a large part of why science often proceeds one funeral at a time. people strongly prefer tools they know. this is also why it's so difficult to teach liberals marxism, or to learn marxism as a liberal. i'm still building methodological stepping stones for myself. 
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Aug 8, 2022 14:57
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AnimeIsTrash posted:I have found the very same in regards to the denser texts e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Even while reading I constantly had to go back because I understood 0 of what I had read. I still haven't finished capital for the very same reasons. The Eighteenth Brumaire is a weird case because it's not terribly hard in theory (though Marx does have the German tendency to ramble) but it's very very specifically devoted to the politics of the second republic. Imagine someone trying to read an essay about the Trump era 150 years from now and going "who the gently caress is James Comey"
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Aug 8, 2022 15:27
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croup coughfield posted:the lumpenproletariat are working class people who work outside the current formal economy that enriches the bourgeoisie, but still have to labor for a living. its important to note that the stated distinction between proletariat and lumpenproletariat seems - by my reading - to be people who labor to survive but the labor they perform isn't socially necessary. i think thats very subjective and not really useful or productive, and implies that the formal economy that serves the bourgeoisie totally encapsulates all socially necessary labor. i disagree. anyway i refrain from trying to separate them from the proletariat, thus my own definition above. maybe a little of that moral panic from the reformation still hanging around in germany, i dunno. working class is working class imo. these are natural allies. Like you, I think "socially necessary" is very subjective. I think gig workers are lumpenproletarian, and most of them are doing socially useful work. I think the prostitutes and door-to-door knife grinders Marx mentioned were performing a function useful to the productive economy, too. Am I off base here?
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Aug 8, 2022 15:49
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Zodium posted:one reason the old marxist texts are difficult to understand is because they're introducing both a method and a theory at once. if you've ever had a chance to read newton's principia, it's the same kind of problem: what he is thinking and how he is thinking are at once novel, which is both what makes the work so seminal, but also so difficult to understand; an academic work through and through. already by the next generation, e.g., lenin, the method and language had become much more developed, people had had a chance to grow up with it, which freed the writers to focus on what they are thinking, on theory rather than method. on this subject, if anyone wants to follow up Marx's thinking process towards Capital, Grundrisse is an absolutely great read: it's basically his summation effort of almost everything he read and studied to see if the thing holds up (hence the name, "foundation"), seven notebooks of personal study and thinking. While both books work on the same subjects, Capital is a work of and for theory first while the Grundrisse is not necessarily meant as such, offering an opportunity to see how Marx himself developed his ideas along the way. besides, it's no joke that it's a summation effort: iirc the topic summary of the entirety of Capital, all volumes, are tackled into the Grundrisse. My old professor of political economy thought it was a much better starting point to work in a course rather than jumping straight to Capital, because even though it's often called "a draft", it gives a preparatory outline of his body of theoretical work and offers some insight in his own thinking process and realizations, which in his view, makes learning the rest much more easier
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Aug 8, 2022 15:57
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Halloween Jack posted:My understanding was that the lumpenproletariat are the urban working class who, because of the nature of their work and lifestyles, are virtually impossible to organize into a group that can act collectively and advocate for itself. It's an unfortunate mistake of translation, Marxist pedagogy and forgetting to evaluate historical context. So, in Marxist theory, "socially necessary labor" is all labor that ensures the continuity of society, the attendance of its material necessities as a whole, emphasis mine. These are material in the absolute sense of the word: how much labor is necessary to feed everyone, put a roof over everyone, clothe everyone, etc You answered yourself there when you said socially useful, which is another thing entirely. That is what tripped a lot of people later on because they were trying to make an equivalence for the two categories in terms that really didn't work either way
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Aug 8, 2022 16:09
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What's a good book to read on holiday that will teach me the immortal science? I'm gonna bring history of the working class in england cause I have that already I've tried marx and Lenin but found them both snoozers but I'm willing to try again. Shame all the good writers I've read from the era are the anarchists, loads of good and readable stuff. Trotsky seemed alright too but I've literally only read a paragraph or two of his
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Aug 8, 2022 16:20
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dead gay comedy forums posted:on this subject, if anyone wants to follow up Marx's thinking process towards Capital, Grundrisse is an absolutely great read: it's basically his summation effort of almost everything he read and studied to see if the thing holds up (hence the name, "foundation"), seven notebooks of personal study and thinking. While both books work on the same subjects, Capital is a work of and for theory first while the Grundrisse is not necessarily meant as such, offering an opportunity to see how Marx himself developed his ideas along the way. cool. I haven't read Grundrisse, but I guess I will be next.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:27
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Communist Thoughts posted:What's a good book to read on holiday that will teach me the immortal science? If you want a contemporary text that is reasonably digestible, I recommend the Meaning of Marxism.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:28
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dead gay comedy forums posted:It's an unfortunate mistake of translation, Marxist pedagogy and forgetting to evaluate historical context. So, in Marxist theory, "socially necessary labor" is all labor that ensures the continuity of society, the attendance of its material necessities as a whole, emphasis mine. These are material in the absolute sense of the word: how much labor is necessary to feed everyone, put a roof over everyone, clothe everyone, etc I would also add that social necessity re: commodities is concerned with the realization of surplus value relative to averages. You can't know whether or to what degree the labor-time that produces a commodity is socially necessary until said commodity is on the market. Under capitalism this means all sorts of crazy poo poo can be considered socially necessary. If you work on a production line making, say, graphics cards to be used in a Bitcoin mining rig that will turbocharge climate change to fuel a ridiculous commodity bubble then congrats your labor-time is extremely socially necessary because the graphics cards you produce are going to sell like gangbusters at an absurd markup.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:30
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croup coughfield posted:the etsy-pintrest industrial complex is doing marketing and payment middleman work and the artisan is paying them for it. you can still try to sell your art locally or through your own online presence or what-have you. whether or not thats feasible due to the business practices of the aforementioned cartel is another conversation i think you misunderstood my point which was agreeing with you, not sure how i led you there except maybe by the personal examples i included, despite which i was doing to prove exactly what you are now saying. That sole proprietors and high earning workers are not petit bourgeois per se, because by definition any member of the bourgeois class is exploiting the surplus value created by the labor of others (e: exploiting it directly that is). whether that exploitation is on a larger or smaller scale is relevant but a different question entirely. HiroProtagonist has issued a correction as of 16:39 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 16:35
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dead gay comedy forums posted:It's an unfortunate mistake of translation, Marxist pedagogy and forgetting to evaluate historical context. So, in Marxist theory, "socially necessary labor" is all labor that ensures the continuity of society, the attendance of its material necessities as a whole, emphasis mine. These are material in the absolute sense of the word: how much labor is necessary to feed everyone, put a roof over everyone, clothe everyone, etc Material necessities are decided, yes by biology I suppose on a very basal level, but primarily by social utility. I don't see how they're separate. Besides, you're relating class to something other than its relationship to production. A factory worker who produces children's toys, would they be lumpen? unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 16:41 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 16:36
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HiroProtagonist posted:i think you misunderstood my point which was agreeing with you, not sure how i led you there except maybe by the personal examples i included, despite which i was doing to prove exactly what you are now saying. That sole proprietors and high earning workers are not petit bourgeois per se, because by definition any member of the bourgeois class is exploiting the surplus value created by the labor of others (e: exploiting it directly that is). whether that exploitation is on a larger or smaller scale is relevant but a different question entirely. Sole proprietors (or their 19th century equivalent) are the literal original marxist definition of petit bourgeois.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:43
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someone posted in here a good essay not long ago on how the Bolsheviks thought to get petit boug assimilated into communism For introductions to marx there has to be textbooks from communist countries no?
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Aug 8, 2022 16:45
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Zodium posted:one reason the old marxist texts are difficult to understand is because they're introducing both a method and a theory at once. if you've ever had a chance to read newton's principia, it's the same kind of problem: what he is thinking and how he is thinking are at once novel, which is both what makes the work so seminal, but also so difficult to understand; an academic work through and through. already by the next generation, e.g., lenin, the method and language had become much more developed, people had had a chance to grow up with it, which freed the writers to focus on what they are thinking, on theory rather than method. yeah well its been 150 years. someone should get on this task pronto
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Aug 8, 2022 16:46
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MeatwadIsGod posted:I would also add that social necessity re: commodities is concerned with the realization of surplus value relative to averages. You can't know whether or to what degree the labor-time that produces a commodity is socially necessary until said commodity is on the market. Under capitalism this means all sorts of crazy poo poo can be considered socially necessary. If you work on a production line making, say, graphics cards to be used in a Bitcoin mining rig that will turbocharge climate change to fuel a ridiculous commodity bubble then congrats your labor-time is extremely socially necessary because the graphics cards you produce are going to sell like gangbusters at an absurd markup. drat right, there's that too. But I would just clarify a bit saying that capitalism creates artificial necessities which then are socially demanded, which is an important distinction to make. this is a very useful learning example about the topic which also contemporary: making graphics cards isn't a social necessity at all, but because selling them provides a lot of money in the global market because they are a social demand, it provides for the exporter the means of attending social necessities (which is also a great example for us to learn about money -> circulation -> money-plus in a practical context). (Incidentally, this is an important part of the "why" of Chinese Marxism and the sequestration of international trade, with hardcore communists agreeing with Deng Xiaoping)
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Aug 8, 2022 16:52
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unwantedplatypus posted:Material necessities are decided, yes by biology I suppose on a very basal level, but primarily by social utility. I don't see how they're separate. Besides, you're relating class to something other than its relationship to production. No, they are proletarian. Also, I think it's a bad category for our time. I do think there are certain parts of the concept which are useful (especially in regards to criminals and as to the reserve army of labor) but in strict theory a lot of people would be called lumpen without the specific attitude or disposition that makes them such, like gig workers, one-day contracts, etc
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Aug 8, 2022 17:07
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i think you can just lump both groups together now. i don't think there's been a meaningful distinction (at least in the imperial core) for quite some time.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:15
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I think lumpen is useful as a term to describe the class of people that primarily survive neither through ownership of capital, nor through selling their labor. This is a unique relationship to production, in much the same way that prole, bourgeois, and petit all have unique relationships to production. Using this definition, then the distinction between lumpen and prole is significant. In America, the lumpen would be your non-working homeless, those who subsist entirely on social programs, dependents, certain types of criminal, anybody who has given up looking for work. The fear of becoming lumpen is used to control the proletariat in American society. As a group they are derided by the bourgeois media and their sympathizers.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:34
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AnimeIsTrash posted:I have found the very same in regards to the denser texts e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Even while reading I constantly had to go back because I understood 0 of what I had read. I still haven't finished capital for the very same reasons. So, in the now long-since-dead D&D equivalent of this thread Cpt_Obvious started, I'd tasked myself with working through Capital for the second time in my life and sharing my thoughts/interpretation/simplification of it, primarily for my own edification and to allow others the opportunity to correct any missteps in analysis I might make, but also for anyone else who might get something out of it. I stopped doing it half-finished due to a combination of ramping covid-related stress at work, and my growing disgust with D&D mods and culture (I just didn't want to participate in threads there anymore.) I still have a few weeks of summer break left, and I've been thinking about picking it up again. Would it be worth posting my analysis here? I don't want to waste everyone's time if Capital analysis is too elementary for most of the thread's participants, but this post made me think there might be some interest in the idea.
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Aug 8, 2022 18:00
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the homeless may be lumpier than the average prole but there isn't really a class or class consciousness difference. maybe there was in different times and places which made the distinction meaningful. the non-working homeless, neets, certain types of criminals, or any other grouping that could fit the definition aren't going to be a counterrevolutionary force if there were to be one in the west (there wont be one). capital probably doesn't even have the structures necessary to marshal them into reserve labor or conscripts outside of prisons anymore. frankly I suspect it was probably always kind of a bullshit distinction, but if it wasn't, it certainly is now
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Aug 8, 2022 18:01
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Communist Thoughts posted:What's a good book to read on holiday that will teach me the immortal science? I’ve been slowly powering through capital and while it’s not a fun read, it’s incredibly good when combined with Harvey so don’t give it up! as for holiday reading there’s always the Marx-Engels reader, lots of smaller works to peruse in that
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Aug 8, 2022 18:09
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Cuttlefush posted:the homeless may be lumpier than the average prole but there isn't really a class or class consciousness difference. maybe there was in different times and places which made the distinction meaningful. the non-working homeless, neets, certain types of criminals, or any other grouping that could fit the definition aren't going to be a counterrevolutionary force if there were to be one in the west (there wont be one). capital probably doesn't even have the structures necessary to marshal them into reserve labor or conscripts outside of prisons anymore. frankly I suspect it was probably always kind of a bullshit distinction, but if it wasn't, it certainly is now The difference is the relationship to the levers of power. The lumpenproletariat doesn't have the same leverage that the proletariat does. They don't have the same ability to shut things down.
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Aug 8, 2022 18:12
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Revolutionary theory derives from economic theory. The classes are defined principally by their relationship to the economy (the means of production), and their revolutionary or counter-revolutionary tendencies are an emergent property of this. A proletarian can be counter-revolutionary and a capitalist can be revolutionary, this just makes them class traitors. But a proletarian is defined by selling his or her labor. The definition is an economic one.
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Aug 8, 2022 18:25
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euphronius posted:someone posted in here a good essay not long ago on how the Bolsheviks thought to get petit boug assimilated into communism Somebody else might know more textbooks from China, PLB are publishing an English translation of the Vietnamese textbooks https://twitter.com/plbmagazine/status/1534956305739390978?t=iGk-MQW_dlh39p3WN3895A&s=19
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Aug 8, 2022 18:55
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Falstaff posted:So, in the now long-since-dead D&D equivalent of this thread Cpt_Obvious started, I'd tasked myself with working through Capital for the second time in my life and sharing my thoughts/interpretation/simplification of it, primarily for my own edification and to allow others the opportunity to correct any missteps in analysis I might make, but also for anyone else who might get something out of it. I stopped doing it half-finished due to a combination of ramping covid-related stress at work, and my growing disgust with D&D mods and culture (I just didn't want to participate in threads there anymore.) You should just post here imo.
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Aug 8, 2022 19:00
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Falstaff posted:So, in the now long-since-dead D&D equivalent of this thread Cpt_Obvious started, I'd tasked myself with working through Capital for the second time in my life and sharing my thoughts/interpretation/simplification of it, primarily for my own edification and to allow others the opportunity to correct any missteps in analysis I might make, but also for anyone else who might get something out of it. I stopped doing it half-finished due to a combination of ramping covid-related stress at work, and my growing disgust with D&D mods and culture (I just didn't want to participate in threads there anymore.) That said, I enjoyed your posting and would definitely read more.
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Aug 8, 2022 19:03
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Mr. Lobe posted:The difference is the relationship to the levers of power. The lumpenproletariat doesn't have the same leverage that the proletariat does. They don't have the same ability to shut things down. unwantedplatypus posted:Revolutionary theory derives from economic theory. The classes are defined principally by their relationship to the economy (the means of production), and their revolutionary or counter-revolutionary tendencies are an emergent property of this. A proletarian can be counter-revolutionary and a capitalist can be revolutionary, this just makes them class traitors. But a proletarian is defined by selling his or her labor. The definition is an economic one. I know the definitions. I don't think the distinction is meaningful in 2022. It might have been in other places and times. People who are actively selling their labor and those who used to but stopped but potentially still can or those who sell their labor while breaking the law have the same relation to the economy. The theoretical lumpenprole who is standing by to join the brownshirts or act as reserve labor to take the place in some general strike doesn't exist. Cuttlefush has issued a correction as of 19:45 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 19:21
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Not So Fast posted:Somebody else might know more textbooks from China, PLB are publishing an English translation of the Vietnamese textbooks i think this is a translation of a 30+ year old work from the phillipines, not a modern textbook unless it just has the same title
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Aug 8, 2022 20:58
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Communist Thoughts posted:i think this is a translation of a 30+ year old work from the phillipines, not a modern textbook iirc luna oi said that it’s the textbook she had when taking a (mandatory, I think) marxism class in a vietnamese university there is a work from the philippines with a similar title, though. “basic principles of marxism-leninism” or something like that.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:08
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imo the main distinction between lumpen and the regular proletarial is that the latter has more leverage and is easier to organize. sadly globalisation has considerably diminished that leverage because it has multiplied intermediaries and companies can easily move from one country to the next. people should probably stick through the first few chapters of the Capital, it becomes way more readable after that. this one is a pretty good commentary, i'm guessing it's on libgen https://www.versobooks.com/books/2264-the-philosophy-of-marx
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Aug 8, 2022 21:55
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https://twitter.com/Blklivesmatter/status/1556745568495538176?s=20&t=cEwLpp2sXNjXH18WCbYVUw
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Aug 8, 2022 22:01
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Falstaff posted:I still have a few weeks of summer break left, and I've been thinking about picking it up again. Would it be worth posting my analysis here? I don't want to waste everyone's time if Capital analysis is too elementary for most of the thread's participants, but this post made me think there might be some interest in the idea. I post random excerpts of stuff I'm reading all the time, you'll be fine 
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Aug 8, 2022 23:12
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