quote:

For SDA, liberalism is not so much pernicious as it is incomplete, a “near left” that we of SDA can successfully work with and form coalitions with; as many liberals, instead of being studied “centrists,” or wedded to mere “diversity” and “equitableness” under neoliberal economics, are honest grassroots progressives who do, in fact, agree with much of what DSA calls for, says, and advocates. We of SDA proudly march with such “mere” liberals!

Moreover, while SDA is a democratic socialist, i.e., social democratic, “big tent,” that does not mean it is a promiscuous gathering-place for all who call themselves “leftists.” Sadly, many present members of DSA are not committed to democratic socialism as such, but, instead, embrace such “far left” nostrums as authoritarianism, Marxism-Leninism, Leninism-Trotskyism and uncompromising “revolutionism.” Such DSA comrades need to be educated within DSA on democratic socialist norms and practices; and informed that much about the “far left” SDA rejects in fundamental principle. Unfortunately, the sectarian hash that Marxist-Leninists and Leninist-Trotskyists have made particularly of the U.S. left over the last over one hundred years has made DSA attractive to them as a new “port of political entry.” It is also the same with anarchists. While certainly not wishing to engage in mass expulsions, the leadership, leading bodies, and active members of DSA should inform such “far left” comrades that perhaps they should find another political home elsewhere, or “settle” for being “mere” left social-democrats!

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/SocDemsAmerica/status/1569332463222280195

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/SocDemsAmerica/status/1569332463222280195

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/SocDemsAmerica/status/1569332463222280195

frantz fanon posted:

The shanty town is the consecration of the colonized’s biological decision to invade the enemy citadel at all costs, and if need be, by the most underground channels. The lumpenproletariat constitutes a serious threat to the “security” of the town and signifies the irreversible rot and the gangrene eating into the heart of colonial domination. So the pimps, the hooligans, the unemployed, and the petty criminals, when approached, give the liberation struggle all they have got, devoting themselves to the cause like valiant workers. These vagrants, these second-class citizens, find their way back to the nation thanks to their decisive, militant action. Unchanged in the eyes of colonial society or vis-a-vis the moral standards of the colonizer, they believe the power of the gun or the hand grenade is the only way to enter the cities. These jobless, these species of subhumans, redeem themselves in their own eyes and before history. The prostitutes too, the domestics at two thousand francs a month, the hopeless cases, all those men and women who fluctuate between madness and suicide, are restored to sanity, return to action and take their vital place in the great march of a nation on the move.

quote:

[The Enclosure Acts are] also interesting because they coincided with a boom in agricultural surplus from new technologies and innovations so its basically the only known successful example of collectivization.

quote:

It consolidated control of farmland under fewer hands. Whether it is under the auspices of the state or an individual is irrelevant. Much in the same way like 2 megacorporations own most of the farmland in North America I would also call "collectivization" under this definition.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Goast posted:

how far down will this thread drop in cspam when vicky 3 releases

croup coughfield posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

croup coughfield posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

Proletarian Mango posted:

Is anybody familiar with "ABCs of Communism" by Jason Wallace Smith? I can't find much about him but his Amazon bio is interesting and he's got a huge catalog of videos spanning 5 years. I've only watched one so far and he looks like a church pastor but he seems really knowledgeable about Communism and his book on the subject is updated every couple of years it looks like and it currently sits at 1500 pages.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTtXH7GVBo

Tankbuster posted:

boy I sure love discussing upcoming videogame by paradox interactive - Victoria 3.

my dad posted:

I hate that I could figure out which goon the quote is from before even looking it up.

Sunny Side Up posted:

I started in on the first one and it’s very well articulated and clarified, but my god what a body of work. And no playlists or other organization.

Edit: uhhh skipped around a little and he talks about cranial capacity a whole lot. Some weird phrenology stuff maybe???

Sunny Side Up posted:

I started in on the first one and it’s very well articulated and clarified, but my god what a body of work. And no playlists or other organization.

Edit: uhhh skipped around a little and he talks about cranial capacity a whole lot. Some weird phrenology stuff maybe???

The Voice of Labor posted:

thanks for making me feel like I'm less online

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

croup coughfield posted:

would you mind providing a link, preferably with a timestamp?

Sunny Side Up posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaDG9aZMrg 4:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmw6CyH9vO4 1:00 or so

Maybe he’s just explaining evolution? I was just bouncing around

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://twitter.com/RedGuardGrind/status/1570452259032424448?cxt=HHwWgICzxcmAr8srAAAA

Proletarian Mango posted:

In the first video, from watching the first ten minutes, he's talking about Australopithecus and Homo Erectus in comparison to Homo Sapiens and the evolution of tool use and explaining how Marx's formulas can be applied to even primitive hunter gatherer bands and how each successive species built upon what the prior one had produced.

In the second video he is also discussing Australopithecus and Homo Erectus, their continental migrations, and the different modes of production arising from these migrations into different environments. Primitive communism appears to be the overall topic.

All mentions of cranial sizes that I've seen are in reference to the differences in size between Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, and Homo Sapiens. Not between Homo Sapiens themselves.

Proletarian Mango posted:

In the first video, from watching the first ten minutes, he's talking about Australopithecus and Homo Erectus in comparison to Homo Sapiens and the evolution of tool use and explaining how Marx's formulas can be applied to even primitive hunter gatherer bands and how each successive species built upon what the prior one had produced.

In the second video he is also discussing Australopithecus and Homo Erectus, their continental migrations, and the different modes of production arising from these migrations into different environments. Primitive communism appears to be the overall topic.

All mentions of cranial sizes that I've seen are in reference to the differences in size between Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, and Homo Sapiens. Not between Homo Sapiens themselves.

Sunny Side Up posted:

If you want a beautiful (and far more digestible and brief) explanation of the four main types of alienation and Marx’s evolution of thought from feuerbach to diamat, and a more clearly articulated progression of alienation under feudalism to the obscenely alienated state of capitalism (leaning on all works from M+E, but especially the newly released notebook translations from the MEGA), I highly recommend Saito’s Ecosocialism. IMO it helps with digesting the whole of Capital + Grundrisse.

I’m actually editing it down right now to be an even quicker read for my discussion group. I cut it to 1/6 the size and am now just double triple checking to make sure it’s still cogent and flows well.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Post it bitch.

Edit: seriously tho I want to read it.

droll posted:

That file host opened a new.tab and tried to download an .APK. so that's kinda dodgy. But thanks for posting the PDF.

quote:

Thesis Two: The Battle of Ideas.
During the 1990s, Cuban President Fidel Castro called upon his fellow Cubans to engage in a ‘battle of ideas’, a phrase borrowed from The German Ideology (1846) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. What Castro meant by this phrase is that people of the left must not cower before the rising tide of neoliberal ideology but must confidently engage with the fact that neoliberalism is incapable of solving the basic dilemmas of humanity. For instance, neoliberalism has no answer to the obstinate fact of hunger: 7.9 billion people live on a planet with food enough for 15 billion, and yet roughly 3 billion people struggle to eat. This fact can only be addressed by socialism and not by the charity industry. The Battle of Ideas refers to the struggle to prevent the conundrums of our time – and the solutions put forth to address them – from being defined by the bourgeoisie. Instead, the political forces for socialism must seek to offer an assessment and solutions far more realistic and credible. For instance, Castro spoke at the United Nations in 1979 with great feeling about the ideas of ‘human rights’ and ‘humanity’:

There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to speak of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk around barefoot so that others can travel in luxurious automobiles? Why should some live for 35 years so that others can live for 70? Why should some be miserably poor so that others can be overly rich? I speak in the name of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak in the name of the sick who do not have medicine. I speak on behalf of those whose right to life and human dignity has been denied.3

When Castro returned to the Battle of Ideas in the 1990s, the left was confronted by two related tendencies that continue to create ideological problems in our time:

1. Post-Marxism. An idea flourished that Marxism was too focused on ‘grand narratives’ (such as the importance of transcending capitalism for socialism) and that fragmentary stories would be more precise for understanding the world. The struggles of the working class and peasantry to gain power in society and over state institutions were seen as just another false ‘grand narrative’, whereas the fragmented politics of the non-governmental organisations were seen as more feasible. The retreat from power into service delivery and into a politics of reform was made in the name of going beyond Marx. But this argument – to go beyond Marx – was really, as the late Aijaz Ahmad pointed out, an argument to return to the period before Marx, to neglect the facts of historical materialism and the zig-zag possibility of building socialism as the historical negation of capitalist brutality and decadence. Post-Marxism was a return to idealism and to perfectionism.

2. Post-colonialism. Sections of the left began to argue that the impact of colonialism was so great that no amount of transformation would be possible, and that the only answer to what could come after colonialism was a return to the past. They treated the past, as the Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui argued in 1928 about the idea of indigenism, as a destination and not as a resource. Several strands of post-colonial theory developed, some of them offering genuine insights often drawn from the best texts of patriotic intellectuals of the new post-colonial nations and of the national liberation revolutionary tradition (anchored by writers such as Frantz Fanon). By the 1990s, the post-colonial tradition, which had previously been committed to revolutionary change in the Third World, was now swept up in North Atlantic university currents that favoured revolutionary impossibility. Afro-pessimism, one part of this new tradition, suggested – in its most extreme version – a desolate landscape of ‘social death’ for people of African descent, with no possibility of change. Decolonial thought or decolonialidad trapped itself by European thought, accepting the claim that many human concepts – such as democracy – are defined by the colonial ‘matrix of power’ or ‘matrix of modernity’. The texts of decolonial thought returned again and again to European thought, unable to produce a tradition that was rooted in the anti-colonial struggles of our time. The necessity of change was suspended in these variants of post-colonialism.

The only real decolonisation is anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism. You cannot decolonise your mind unless you also decolonise the conditions of social production that reinforce the colonial mentality. Post-Marxism ignores the fact of social production as well as the need to build social wealth that must be socialised. Afro-pessimism suggests that such a task cannot be accomplished because of permanent racism. Decolonial thought goes beyond Afro-pessimism but cannot go beyond post-Marxism, failing to see the necessity of decolonising the conditions of social production.

Ferrinus posted:

1. was one of the bolsheviks who really opposed brest-litovsk to the point of at least entertaining a mutiny against lenin for betraying the revolution at the time

2. was economically on the "right" of the party and wanted to continue the NEP, free up markets to allow peasants and small holders to enrich themselves, etc (kind of prescient in light of the success of dengism but maybe not a good idea at the time)

E.A. Preobrazhensky, "From N.E.P. to Socialism" posted:

But while possessing all the natural resources for a temporary isolated economic existence (before the proletarian revolution in other countries), Soviet Russia nevertheless also needed, in order to ensure the most rapid development of its productive forces, economic connexions with capitalist Europe. While the capitalist countries were urged towards Russia by the need to seek markets and supplies of raw material for their developed industry, Russia was urged towards Europe by the inadequacy of her industrial development, which, in turn, was held back by the disorganized state of agriculture. Without a sufficiently sound agriculture Russian pre-revolutionary capitalist industry could not have survived. Without a strong agriculture socialist industry could not develop rapidly. But for agriculture to get quickly on to its feet, it needed external help, it needed, and on a large scale, not only short-term commercial credit but, also, and mainly, long-term credit, credit for land-improvement and for the restoration of the economy. Russian socialist industry was not able to furnish this aid to agriculture on a large scale; it could not provide credit on any substantial scale because it was itself in need of help through credit. It lacked sufficient circulating capital, and had to a large extent worn out its equipment during the war and the revolution.

Only the richer industry of Europe could supply credit to Russian agriculture, in reviving which this industry was itself interested to a high degree. Thus, the economic situation in Europe in the 1920s took this form, that a mutual economic tie-up was needed for the development of the productive forces both in capitalist Europe and in socialist Russia, and the initial driving force of development in this period of Europe’s economic history necessarily had to be provided by a rapid, almost violent, development of Russian agriculture. As I have already said, European industry did not possess within Europe itself the preconditions for its rapid restoration without new markets and supplies of raw material beyond the bounds of this continent. [...]