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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/UserConspicuous/status/1297165340850429958?s=19 they just send you a zizek apart from the cultural theory, a zizek is great for keeping the local racoon population under control
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Aug 22, 2020 18:44
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now i want to find that post about zizek in a mascot suit climbing out of an elevator shaft while talking about a batman movie. edit: found it Gene Hackman Fan fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 22, 2020 20:04
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Modern trotskyist organizations seem to be much more active on social media and doing a better job of radicalization/engaging with the zoomers. Are the divisions irreparable enough to prevent the organization of a new popular front in a western country lacking proportional representation? Thinking specifically of the French communists organizing the Leftist Front in 2012 with a dozen other parties as an example. Maybe I don’t understand the modern Trotsky platform well enough, although I guess they were weakened in recent years by the split leading to the international socialist alternative. At a minimum and first step im not sure why more minority anti capitalist parties in the anglo sphere don’t coordinate to avoid running candidates in the same districts.
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Aug 22, 2020 21:34
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yr new gurlfrand! posted:Modern trotskyist organizations seem to be much more active on social media and doing a better job of radicalization/engaging with the zoomers. ill try to answer some of this since you mention SA, lotta words though: so in SA here in the US for decades weve been calling for a mass workers party. have never viewed ourselves as being that party, but that we would join such a party and call on others to do the same and work together and debate issues and ideas within it. would be something akin to a US labor party or hopefully something beyond even that, but core principles being independent class politics. weve worked with and supported/endorsed DSA candidates even who run as dems though we strongly disagree with this, greens, other independent candidates running, etc. not at all sectarian about it. this isnt a popular front though its a united front, popular front would be working within the democratic or liberal parties to defeat conservatives which we disagree with. its also not where most of our time and effort is spent. a lot of people think because we ran kshama and won that thats all we care about but her race and the handful of others were more to demonstrate that it is possible to run and to win independently from the dems on a socialist platform, and then once won how those offices can be used by class struggle candidates regardless of whatever org theyre a member of. its actually something we have to disabuse a lot of people of when they first are interested in joining because they think all we focus on is getting people elected and its like maybe 10% of where our time is spent. back during occupy we made the call to run 100 occupy candidates around the country and kshama was one candidate we ran to again, demonstrate how socialists could do this successfully. we also dont run candidates against other independent candidates when we do run, but its true weve had some do that to us like in minneapolis when we ran giger jentzen and the green party ran a candidate to the right of her to try to split left votes and clear a path for the dem candidates. even despite that which pissed all of us off immensely, weve still endorsed howie hawkins in the general election this year. have had other candidates and orgs which we have endorsed despite disagreements like that, it sucks but gotta keep eyes on the prize and no time for backbiting. regarding the split from a year ago, the split was pretty meaningless except in like england and some of the african sections. the leadership found themselves in a minority and the rest of the international basically disagreed with them but they wouldnt accept this. a lot of the leadership, mostly based in england, was very anti anything they deemed to look like identity politics and imo too caught up in the trade union politics of england specifically and holding on to positions they had within the unions there. so our comrades in Ireland basically led and won the abortion rights campaign a few years back through the ROSA organization which they spearheaded, which was one of the biggest political victories in our parties history, but some of the leadership accused the irish section of catering to identity politics in winning it and the rank and file around the world were shocked and appalled by that charge. because they were afraid of losing their positions, the leadership basically used bureaucratic maneuvers to kick everyone out of the party except a few hundred people in england and say they were the real CWI even though they were an extreme minority of the international but still kept using the name and the rest of us just decided better to move on and change our name than look insane by getting into fights over the name of the org and arguing about who the REAL CWI is, no time for that stupid poo poo. in the US there were like 20 people in western massachusettes who left, thats it. in england yeah it basically split the party in half which sucked and nigeria and south africa i think similarly were split down the middle. but in like china, i dont know of a single person who left with them. most everywhere else had very little overall impact.
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Aug 22, 2020 22:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/UserConspicuous/status/1297165340850429958?s=19 the wolff book is good
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Aug 22, 2020 22:17
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the lamb guy is much more convincing than the people who just call him a trot
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Aug 22, 2020 22:21
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Finicums Wake posted:the lamb guy is much more convincing than the people who just call him a trot Setting his nonsensical ideology aside, remember when Trotsky — like the sore loser he always was — accepted an offer from imperialist Jim Crow America to publish anti-Stalin/USSR books? I’m surprised Stalin let him live for years after that.
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Aug 23, 2020 00:30
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apropos to nothing posted:ill try to answer some of this since you mention SA, lotta words though: thanks for taking the time to clarify that part of SA for me, I wasn't entirely clear on the distinction made there between a mass workers party and being an advocacy group that would support a mass workers party if needed. I'm not an american and not familiar enough with the organization and work done to support and consolidate leftist wins for workers in the US. Direct action gets more results and improvements for workers than through the ballot box. In my mind I was thinking of Canada specifically, where any vote further left than the social democrat NDP ends up being fractured at both the federal and provincial levels between several different political parties without proportional representation. I used the wrong terminology as well, I was thinking of a united front rather than a popular front. Do you happen to know if the canadian branch of SA follows a similar philosophy? The communist parties in Canada haven't elected any candidates in 50 years and i've been wondering why they aren't more involved in supporting class conscious candidates at the local level.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:20
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yr new gurlfrand! posted:thanks for taking the time to clarify that part of SA for me, I wasn't entirely clear on the distinction made there between a mass workers party and being an advocacy group that would support a mass workers party if needed. np. yeah i mean were a revolutionary socialist party and so a mass workers party is much different than a revolutionary party, though under the right circumstances they can become one and the same. its for that reason we advocate for a mass party in the US and not just trying to get everyone to join SA cause theres plenty of people who really belong in a workers/social democratic party who we would want to collaborate with and work together with while also recognizing theyre not socialists or revolutionaries in their approach. I'll be honest I'm not too familiar with the Canadian section's approach to national elections, I think it's similar enough to our aproach in the US but I know a lot less about the canadian left parties im sorry to say. I know in 2018 we campaigned aggressively for Jean Swanson who was a local councilor in Vancouver but that was a local seat. here was the article put out right before the most recent parliamentary vote: http://socialistalternative.ca/posts/3565/a-new-politics-needed-strong-left-is-best-answer-to-the-right/
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Aug 23, 2020 20:12
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he Principcal Contradiction is a nice read although it is a different book than I thought it would be. I thought it would be similar to Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy as an examination of dialectical materialism, but it's more like a brief introduction to dialectics and an application of that theory to history and especially recent history. It doesnt ever mention things like "thesis/antithesis/synthesis," or a definition of materialism, the way Politzer's does. The biggest problem with Elementary Principles of Philosophy is its outdated nature, which can't be helped really since it's compiled from his 1930s lectures. As a result it's very orthodox, pretty Eurocentric, and more focused on defining materialism as in "why God doesnt freaking exist" and stuff like that. I still recommend it as a thorough but accessible look into dialectics, but things like proving monarchism wrong are less important to Lauesen than Politzer I would def recommend this book since its biggest asset is the multiple examples of applying dialectical thinking to recent historical processes, in a way that's simple and easy to understand. Lauesen goes over things like WWI and the Sino-Soviet split as examples of contradictory forces working against each other or correct/incorrect applications of dialectical analysis. As implied by its title what he wants to get across is that throughout history there is a "principle contradiction," which dominates and informs all the other contradictions, and is itself more subtly shaped by them. The rough outline of what he's identified as capitalism's "principle contradictions throughout the 20th century are - inter-imperialist conflict between Germany and USA/France/UK (19th century-WWI) - production vs. consumption (1918-1939) leading to global economic crises - Axis vs. Allies (WWII), which combined with production vs. consumption created the welfare state and set up its coming conflict with transnational capitalism - USA vs. socialism (1945-1975), with USA vs. old colonial powers and USA vs. third world countries also being important - Capital vs. the state (1975-2007), the rise of neoliberalism and its success in crushing socialism and anti-imperialism The last part of the book is about the importance of both analysis and practice and how doing both will assist in moving the historical process forward, and the importance of finding the present day's principle contradiction. He also quotes Mao a lot. All in all I'd give it an 8.4/10 BNM
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Aug 23, 2020 20:43
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This is probably preaching to the choir, but Richard Wolff just put out a little analysis of the USSR, China, and the USA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tbf2bpgs-E It talks about private property in the USSR, defines state capitalism, and suggests we may end up at war with China.
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Aug 24, 2020 15:22
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I hate how Wolff has such a casual attitude to the truth about details that aren't important enough to make the video. I mean like the treatment of Lenin here. Like I kinda want to commend him for doing a lot better than trot-adjacent depictions of history, which have been the more popular left-wing narrative for a long time, but I can't because he's such a shameless distorter at the same time. To help you see what I mean, the calling card of the distorter is that when they skip over things for the sake of keeping to their point, they don't imply that there's a lot more to learn out about the thing in question and it would be helpful to do it, they imply that there's nothing interesting to see there. When Wolff says that Lenin didn't elaborate on communism, he says there's nothing to see about it in Lenin's writings. When Wolff represents the social development of USSR and China as this drab stagnation pretty much from the beginning to the end, he says there's nothing to see about social development and struggles in histories of USSR and China. Even if one doesn’t know enough a thing to recommend people to dig deeper, it’s valuable to say it out loud because otherwise not saying anything is going to be read as an expert opinion that there’s nothing important there, especially if you’re some kind of respected professor and author. uncop fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 05:42
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why bother with theory when you can just watch cartoons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjIkjRSJnow
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Aug 25, 2020 06:25
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heres a better cartoon than whatever that is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZbho6AsBOc
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Aug 25, 2020 13:00
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apropos to nothing posted:heres a better cartoon than whatever that is I remember histeria, I was just within the target demographic when it was on air. I don't remember it very well but I remember hearing it had at least one episode pulled from air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_4HCDl_kfQ Surprisingly transgressive for Saturday morning children's TV
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Aug 25, 2020 13:25
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Theory question: everyone today criticizes labor theory of value on the grounds that no one believes things have any sort of metaphysical value. Leaving aside that argument's actual merits, it wasn't invented until after Capital was published. What did Marx's contemporaries criticize it for? Was it just that they stuck to exchange or use values?
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Aug 25, 2020 14:02
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https://twitter.com/JoshuaYJackson/status/1298034493253656583 This led me to reading up a bit on this Józef Piłsudski dude and uh lol his wiki page sure seems eager to paint him as some kind of champion of diversity and protector of the Jews despite other sources coming to a very different conclusion!
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Aug 25, 2020 14:56
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uncop posted:I hate how Wolff has such a casual attitude to the truth about details that aren't important enough to make the video. I mean like the treatment of Lenin here. Like I kinda want to commend him for doing a lot better than trot-adjacent depictions of history, which have been the more popular left-wing narrative for a long time, but I can't because he's such a shameless distorter at the same time. I agree with this to a great extent, but that said, his "economics textbook" books are very, very good and tend to be free of that type of sweeping stuff under the rug. Maybe because he has co-authors that helps, or when he puts on his book writing pants he does something different or whatever. Contending Economic Theories is a very, very good read if you want an in-depth analysis of those systems.
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Aug 25, 2020 15:50
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uncop posted:I hate how Wolff has such a casual attitude to the truth about details that aren't important enough to make the video. I mean like the treatment of Lenin here. Like I kinda want to commend him for doing a lot better than trot-adjacent depictions of history, which have been the more popular left-wing narrative for a long time, but I can't because he's such a shameless distorter at the same time. He did mention at the beginning that for further reading he wrote an entire book about it, so I don't really think this is a completely fair criticism. That said, it's a 30 minute Youtube video aimed at the general public. It's going to cut some details for brevity. I don't know whether you are assigning intention to his "distortion" or merely claiming that he should mention that there's more to conversation.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:23
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StashAugustine posted:Theory question: everyone today criticizes labor theory of value on the grounds that no one believes things have any sort of metaphysical value. Leaving aside that argument's actual merits, it wasn't invented until after Capital was published. What did Marx's contemporaries criticize it for? Was it just that they stuck to exchange or use values? the labor theory of value preceded marx; he got it from ricardo and some other classic orthodox liberal economists, and just expanded on it to show that it meant capital-expanding wage labor was inherently exploitative. people who criticize the law of value on the grounds that it assigns things "metaphysical" value don't understand it - there's nothing metaphysical about it, it's basically about counting hours of work put in to producing something compared to hours of work you can get out of that thing (and noticing that it's specifically and only human labor-power that has the potential for more output than input)
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Aug 25, 2020 16:44
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Mr. Lobe posted:I remember histeria, I was just within the target demographic when it was on air. I don't remember it very well but I remember hearing it had at least one episode pulled from air: They had an episode that covered the Cultural Revolution but it's not on youtube.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:58
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my favorite histeria sketch will always be the one about descartes trying to come up with the cogito
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Aug 25, 2020 17:02
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iirc they did a song about communism where they pretty much explicitly side with trotsky and portray stalin as a moustache-twirling villain subverting the pure idealistic intentions of socialism
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Aug 25, 2020 17:15
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CYBEReris posted:iirc they did a song about communism where they pretty much explicitly side with trotsky and portray stalin as a moustache-twirling villain subverting the pure idealistic intentions of socialism pretty shocking that the western media would do this
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Aug 25, 2020 17:16
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the hysteria baby freaked me out as a child
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Aug 25, 2020 17:35
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CYBEReris posted:iirc they did a song about communism where they pretty much explicitly side with trotsky and portray stalin as a moustache-twirling villain subverting the pure idealistic intentions of socialism 
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Aug 25, 2020 17:54
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Ferrinus posted:the labor theory of value preceded marx; he got it from ricardo and some other classic orthodox liberal economists, and just expanded on it to show that it meant capital-expanding wage labor was inherently exploitative. people who criticize the law of value on the grounds that it assigns things "metaphysical" value don't understand it - there's nothing metaphysical about it, it's basically about counting hours of work put in to producing something compared to hours of work you can get out of that thing (and noticing that it's specifically and only human labor-power that has the potential for more output than input) Sure I more or less get this (still a touch fuzzy on parts of his theory but in still reading Capital), including that LTV came from Smith/Ricardo. My point is, would a bourgeois economist in 1870 disagree with his ideas on labor value (he certainly seems to write like it) and if so why? Because they think the way to analyze the economy is via exchange/use values?
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Aug 25, 2020 18:01
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Dreddout posted:the hysteria baby freaked me out as a child theb do NOT watch their cultural revolution sketch, it portrays all of the players as babies. baby mao, baby ms mao...
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Aug 25, 2020 18:03
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StashAugustine posted:Sure I more or less get this (still a touch fuzzy on parts of his theory but in still reading Capital), including that LTV came from Smith/Ricardo. My point is, would a bourgeois economist in 1870 disagree with his ideas on labor value (he certainly seems to write like it) and if so why? Because they think the way to analyze the economy is via exchange/use values? Smith was split between a labor theory of value (the value of all commodities sources itself from past labor) and a price of production theory of value (commodities just mysteriously happen to have values that are equal to the commodities that they are made of; labor is just another commodity that is exactly equal in value to the wage). That split persisted through the whole development period of classical political economy, and Ricardo was in the minority of that split. Economists disagreeing with LTV in 1870 would claim that it's pure fantasy that labor is some sort of special commodity instead of a regular commodity like all the others. They'd probably say that Marx is right that wages are determined by the values of the commodities that the worker consumes to reproduce their labor power, but that it just means that labor is just another commodity that gets its value from the commodities that it consists of and that workers add exactly the value of their wages to the end product, while the bourgeoisie add the value of their property. Profit is some kind of mysterious quantity that arises from technological advancement or who knows. Eventually the marginalists managed to finish the circle and "prove" that the source to the mystery of profit is in how technological advancement means new needs that couldn't be satisfied before can be satisfied now. That, of course, means that workers aren't responsible for value addition, the ones to thank are the visionary bourgeoisie blazing new trails. uncop fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 18:18
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https://twitter.com/GutianGang/status/1297899782208229376?s=20
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Aug 25, 2020 18:27
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wait whats the difference between leninism and marxism-leninism
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Aug 25, 2020 18:28
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Raskolnikov38 posted:wait whats the difference between leninism and marxism-leninism As it's used, leninism (like marxism, freudianism or platonism) is an abstract philosophical allegiance that can be used in whatever context the person wishes. Marxism-leninism is (or at least tries to be) a holistic theoretical base that demands to be treated like a science (you can't just pick whatever you like for inspiration, you have to hold onto everything that isn't objectively mistaken).
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Aug 25, 2020 18:40
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lol
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Aug 25, 2020 18:51
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I like how mutualism makes the cut twice
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Aug 25, 2020 18:55
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im ba’athism
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Aug 25, 2020 19:03
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return to blanqui
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Aug 25, 2020 19:05
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im gay
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Aug 25, 2020 19:08
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GalacticAcid posted:im gay same
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Aug 25, 2020 19:12
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GalacticAcid posted:im gay wQQw
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Aug 25, 2020 19:17
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GalacticAcid posted:im gay
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Aug 25, 2020 19:17
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