(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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About time the left got its own Jon McNaughton
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Jan 12, 2023 20:15
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roundup of 2022 labor organization in the USA: https://truthout.org/articles/union-organizing-surged-in-2022-lets-push-for-a-radical-labor-movement-in-2023/
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Jan 12, 2023 23:40
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What do you think of this? I’ve been wary of Harvey since Vijay Prashad was critical of him. https://critisticuffs.org/texts/david-harvey
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Jan 13, 2023 01:26
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https://twitter.com/PicturesUssr/status/1613650023065034754?s=20
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Jan 13, 2023 03:32
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Sunny Side Up posted:What do you think of this? I’ve been wary of Harvey since Vijay Prashad was critical of him. Name one Marxist that hasn't been criticised by, or done criticism of, another Marxist
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Jan 13, 2023 04:08
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Jonah Galtberg posted:Name one Marxist that hasn't been criticised by, or done criticism of, another Marxist Not everyone is considered the definitive guide through one of the most fundamental texts. And critique is good—-what I get from that is more “lots of interesting grains of salt to take with his lectures” I never would have considered as a baby Marxist 13+ years ago.
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Jan 13, 2023 04:11
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I agree with your post. All political theory should be read with a critical eye and with "grains of salt". This carries a much more moderate connotation than saying you are "wary" of Harvey after he received a piece of criticism. Peace be upon you.
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Jan 13, 2023 04:27
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being aware of criticisms has never done me any good in my life. I have never said "u know im lucky I read a different guy complain about this first"
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Jan 13, 2023 05:43
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when I was just getting started on reading theory, it was David Harvey's takes on China that sort of put me in a more receptive mindset towards Socialism with Chinese characteristics, rather than all the anticommunist lib poo poo about how they're capitalists now [thanks to Deng], and that's sort of been top-of-mind for me personally when regarding Harvey skimming that post from Prashad, I think it's reasonable to consider that Harvey's take on Capital is, ultimately, his read on it, and there may well be a "danger" of that interpretation becoming far too popularized over and above whatever else Marx could have meant, simply because so many people learned to follow-along with Harvey while reading Capital that said, if somebody else wants to take a shot it, they should take a shot at it I'll give that link a closer read when I'm in a better headspace for it, but certainly I'm not smart enough to have a stronger opinion on interpreting Capital croup coughfield posted:I have never said "u know im lucky I read a different guy complain about this first" Tom Brass's takedown of James C. Scott's writings on Southeast Asia, and the revelations that Scott was likely a CIA asset, saved me from reading his work
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Jan 13, 2023 05:59
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i like to read dumb poo poo by cranks thats why im here
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Jan 13, 2023 06:02
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croup coughfield posted:i like to read dumb poo poo by cranks thats why im here no u
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Jan 13, 2023 18:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:Tom Brass's takedown of James C. Scott's writings on Southeast Asia, and the revelations that Scott was likely a CIA asset, saved me from reading his work this was the anarchist guy writing about mountain people in vietnam or something like that?
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Jan 13, 2023 20:17
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MeatwadIsGod posted:The Grundrisse was like a rough draft of what Marx would develop into Capital, right? I've never read it, but after reading all of Capital (except Theories of Surplus Value, gently caress that) I dunno if it'd be worthwhile outside of a comparative study between Grundrisse and Capital. Basically - however, it is quite different in lots of ways. It covers a lot of material not covered in Capital, has quite a few different interpretations of different topics, etc. so it is not simply an earlier repeat of Capital but worthwhile to read on its own. Though, it has some really stupid takes people went and ran with (The Fragment on the Machine specifically)
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Jan 13, 2023 20:32
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Doktor Avalanche posted:this was the anarchist guy writing about mountain people in vietnam or something like that? He's a very famous anthropologist and political scientist who has written lots of influential-in-academia books about the relationship between people and states, most prominently Weapons of the Weak about how people can passively undermine state policies and resist authority even without active resistance that would be recognized as such, and Seeing Like a State about how states try to make their populations legible so that they can be governed. He also claims to be an anarchist yet freely admits that he got a bunch of young Indonesian communists killed by reporting on their activities to the CIA, but I'm sure those things are unrelated.
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Jan 13, 2023 22:37
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Does anyone have a primary source for this? The story has been told in a number of places; the version below is from the LA Times. quote:There is a memorable little scene from the early history of the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky is inexorably losing in a power struggle with Josef Stalin. In his anger and frustration the old revolutionary rises to make a dramatic exit from a meeting of the Politburo. Striding out of the chamber, he tries to slam the door behind him. But the great Kremlin door is too large, too heavy. For a mortifying moment Trotsky is left there struggling to pull it shut, the man--and his political point--symbolically and literally dwarfed.
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Jan 13, 2023 22:40
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vyelkin posted:He also claims to be an anarchist yet freely admits that he got a bunch of young Indonesian communists killed by reporting on their activities to the CIA, but I'm sure those things are unrelated. there's no contradiction there
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Jan 13, 2023 22:52
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mawarannahr posted:Does anyone have a primary source for this? The story has been told in a number of places; the version below is from the LA Times. it’s recounted in volume I of Kotkin’s Stalin bio which is pretty rigorously cited (making it a useful book despite the author’s fanatical anticommunism) so you could go there to start tracking down the primary source. I would find the citation for you but I don’t have my copy accessible currently.
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Jan 13, 2023 23:35
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vyelkin posted:He's a very famous anthropologist and political scientist who has written lots of influential-in-academia books about the relationship between people and states, most prominently Weapons of the Weak about how people can passively undermine state policies and resist authority even without active resistance that would be recognized as such, and Seeing Like a State about how states try to make their populations legible so that they can be governed. He also claims to be an anarchist yet freely admits that he got a bunch of young Indonesian communists killed by reporting on their activities to the CIA, but I'm sure those things are unrelated. Sounds like an anarchist to me...
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Jan 13, 2023 23:39
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and people say anarchists don't achieve anything
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Jan 13, 2023 23:40
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There was a recent book on the Christianization of African Americans that shows that, contrary to all of the popular memory since, only about 30% of slaves were meaningfully Christian before the Civil War. From the documentary evidence, Christianization either accompanied or rapidly followed formal and informal emancipation. In surviving accounts, they are often one and the same. What explains this phenomenon? The ”proof” that Christ would liberate people facilitated acceptance of Christianity as an exclusive and totalizing ideology in those who had an existing superficial or syncretic practice, and conversion in those who practiced transatlantic African animism. Which is to say that liberation made them believe Christianity was liberating. Now, relevance to Leonardo Boff and Co. notwithstanding, I think this is an important lesson for discouraged Marxists. Since 1991, I often feel like the left has despaired. First, of course, it’s always hard to find faith, hope and charity, or class consciousness and solidarity in The World. We live in a fallen state, after the fall of the USSR and a beacon of Socialism in the world. Where is our Moses to lead to working class to freedom? What I think is worth taking away from this is that slaves may or may not have been familiar with the Jubilee and Exodus and all of these other things even people of the time laid over their experience. Ultimately, it was not belief in a promised freedom that ended their captivity, but a promise fulfilled gave them reason to believe. We spend so much time thinking about how to read the working class into Marxist theory. I agree that it makes sense of their suffering, just as Christianity offers a slave a way to make sense of theirs. It would be great if workers understood how they were being exploited, absolutely. But, it’s only going to be through the action that sets them free that people are won over to the cause. How many Russians were Communists in 1906? Chinese in 1936? I think Socialism needs to be demonstrative, like any popular belief system. The how and why are worth theorizing, of course, but let’s not lose sight of actions being at the heart of everything.
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Jan 14, 2023 03:37
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Tupamaros had a great quote that i repeat all the time "Words divide us, actions unite us".
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Jan 14, 2023 03:42
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croup coughfield posted:i like to read dumb poo poo by cranks thats why im here what book was that?
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Jan 14, 2023 03:43
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Frosted Flake posted:How many Russians were Communists in 1906? a lot, actually
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Jan 14, 2023 04:17
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Frosted Flake posted:There was a recent book on the Christianization of African Americans that shows that, contrary to all of the popular memory since, only about 30% of slaves were meaningfully Christian before the Civil War. From the documentary evidence, Christianization either accompanied or rapidly followed formal and informal emancipation. In surviving accounts, they are often one and the same. What explains this phenomenon?
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Jan 14, 2023 04:18
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Ardent Communist posted:Tupamaros had a great quote that i repeat all the time "Words divide us, actions unite us". I like this but it reminds me of the tendency to ignore the difference between organization and mobilization. Pathos is important but so is struggling together.
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Jan 14, 2023 04:22
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Punkin Spunkin posted:What's the name of the book? Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation: African American Slaves and Christianity, 1830-1870 During the Civil War, traditional history tells us, Afro-Christianity proved a strong force for slaves' perseverance and hope of deliverance. In Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation, however, Daniel Fountain raises the possibility that Afro-Christianity played a less significant role within the antebellum slave community than most scholars currently assert. Bolstering his argument with a quantitative survey of religious behavior and WPA slave narratives, Fountain presents a new timeline for the African American conversion experience. Both the survey and the narratives reveal that fewer than 40 percent of individuals who gave a datable conversion experience had become Christians prior to acquiring freedom. Fountain pairs the survey results with an in-depth examination of the obstacles within the slaves' religious landscape that made conversion more difficult if not altogether unlikely, including infrequent access to religious instruction, the inconsistent Christian message offered to slaves, and the slaves' evolving religious identity. Furthermore, he provides other possible explanations for beliefs that on the surface resembled Christianity but in fact adhered to traditional African religions. Fountain maintains that only after emancipation and the fulfillment of the predicted Christian deliverance did African Americans more consistently turn to Christianity. Freedom, Fountain contends, brought most former slaves into the Christian faith. Provocative and enlightening, Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation redefines the role of Christianity within the slave community.
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Jan 14, 2023 04:56
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Frosted Flake posted:I think Socialism needs to be demonstrative, like any popular belief system. The how and why are worth theorizing, of course, but let’s not lose sight of actions being at the heart of everything. i 100% agree with this, and the continuous fervent efforts since 1945 to portray life in existing socialist states as basically mordor but with more oppression makes me think that capital does as well.
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Jan 14, 2023 05:57
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Frosted Flake posted:
The history leading up to 1905 in Russia and 1927 in China was entirely based on material results building a mass base. 1905 led to 1917, 1927 led to 1949. In China, the winning strategy which led to 1949 elucidated the power of the Mass Line, which as a concept clearly captures what I believe you are going for. Also—-socialism as an idea may represent in the popular mythos or collective unconscious a belief in something better, but it is distinct from some vague unifying faith in a promised land (“freedom”) or Solidarity (defined in opposition to Alienation). It is something concrete and is not a belief system but is rather underpinned by distinct structural action (eg decommodification, proletarian [real] democracy, sustainable metabolism with nature, etc etc). Sunny Side Up has issued a correction as of 06:22 on Jan 14, 2023 |
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Jan 14, 2023 06:19
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Frosted Flake posted:Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation: African American Slaves and Christianity, 1830-1870 well, he's white, but his ratemyprofessor grades are pretty decent (https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor?tid=490295) so  libgen has his book and some reviews if you search for the title. book link https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=136189630. one review looked on the mildly critical end but i have no sense of how that little sphere of academia talks poo poo to each other. none of the citing articles are about how it's completely bogus. skimming the book it doesn't look like crankery at all but i have no basis to actually evaluate whatever it is constitutes good methodology here. his first overall argument is that the predominant narrative about african american religion and conversion in that time period is inaccurate. yeah, no question there. his second argument is "that emancipation provided African Americans the greatest incentive to convert". that seems to mostly be argued in chapter 4, CHRIST UNCHAINED, which is a badass chapter title. after reading more bits of this chapter and some of the preceeding on alternatives to Christianity I think he should have just replaced "emancipation" with "social and material conditions". the rapid formation of black christian churches, support from (christian) abolitionists, revivals, etc show that the christians were organized, funded, and usually the first established social nexus immediately after the war. emancipation provided the conditions for rapid conversion to christianity is the materialist take. emancipation motivating individuals to convert because it fulfilled the promise of liberation or whatever is not. also i don't think that's really what he was arguing. also, side note, what the gently caress were the odds that the rest of the country, north or south, was going to let any other religion in? if the rest of the country was predominantly zoroastrian, what the hell would happen? in that sense i'm not seeing a ton of parallels to successful socialist revolutions. the big one is just that organization and the ability to provide meaningful social and material benefits after a major upheaval is a good way to recruit. it looks like an interesting read but it will be outlawed after the revolution and we'll still have to kill god and brutally suppress any and all religious activity just like the godless soviets did.
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Jan 14, 2023 07:16
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I think it's a worthwhile thought to hold onto in the sense that overwhelming popularity (numbers of people defining as Marxist in some sense, people familiar with socialism or socialist texts, people voting or saying they'll vote for a socialist political group) is not a necessary step in advance of a revolution for a revolution to succeed. It's a liberal concept to think 'oh we must have a majority in favour of something before we can do it', instead we should try to find the smallest number of working class people in particular positions in society (both workplaces and the social spaces they are connected to) that we think are necessary to accomplish the necessary level of change to call it a revolution and bring them to the necessary level of political education and organisation to pull it off.* If successful then their demonstrated practice and the change in material conditions for the rest of the working class will be sufficient to bring them onside. This post-revolutionary phase of internal politics will be extremely hard as suddenly lots of workers at all levels of political thought would suddenly be thrust into a controlling position (I recall an anecdote of a Chinese workforce seizing their workplace post revolution and then issuing joint stock certificates for the company to all the workers, possibly with a picture of Mao on it) but failure to retain trust in the working class - at the absolute least that the conditions they are under will eventually shape them into socialists by experience - will doom the revolution more surely than some weird idiosyncrasies appearing within the system because it has geniunely been put in their hands. Marxism as an ideology is obviously about universal liberation and peace but the socialist transformation period has to be pretty gritty about who it going to be doing what and when. *Chances are this will least be a considerable minority throughout multiple industries and across the entire country of course.
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Jan 14, 2023 12:54
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https://twitter.com/hannahkrieg/status/1616133654274789378?s=20&t=ocom2E7L4mRYGRcw8TuZ3A
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Jan 20, 2023 05:42
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Atrocious Joe posted:https://twitter.com/hannahkrieg/status/1616133654274789378?s=20&t=ocom2E7L4mRYGRcw8TuZ3A she’s leaving office to start a podcast, incredible
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Jan 20, 2023 13:50
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thats a real shame. she did a lot of good for regular people in that seat, one of the few office holders in the country you could say that about. wishing her the best in the new endeavor
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Jan 20, 2023 14:03
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i have friends in the PNW who have been saying that it feels worse than it's felt in years, that the libs have pushed a "things are good enough now, don't gently caress them up" argument that's keeping people sympathetic to the left from getting involved. don't know how true that is, but it's the first thing i thought of when i saw that news
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Jan 20, 2023 14:22
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I am a worker and I would like to strike back.....
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Jan 20, 2023 14:51
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croup coughfield posted:thats a real shame. she did a lot of good for regular people in that seat, one of the few office holders in the country you could say that about. wishing her the best in the new endeavor AnimeIsTrash posted:she’s leaving office to start a podcast, incredible i don't think she deserves that level of cynicism. she actually does/did stuff. if workers strike back ends up waging a protracted peoples war from deep in the ballard wilderness i expect to see you all at the meetings.
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Jan 20, 2023 14:53
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AnimeIsTrash posted:she’s leaving office to start a podcast, incredible
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Jan 20, 2023 14:59
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AnimeIsTrash posted:she’s leaving office to start a podcast, incredible everybody wants to be a media personality, you're seeing it more and more
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Jan 20, 2023 15:00
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im not being cynical at all!!
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Jan 20, 2023 15:01
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| # ? May 28, 2024 16:18 |
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camoseven posted:I am a worker and I would like to strike back..... Sorry, my union bosses say we're not allowed to strike back. It could hurt the business and give them cause to do more layoffs.
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Jan 20, 2023 15:07
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