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DirtyRobot posted:Just to be clear, my claim is that if you're in the US, you fight US propaganda. I'm just saying that in order to do so, you have to have some sense of what's actually going on beyond your immediate sphere. Like you need to be able to say, "No, sorry, gently caress off, your framing is wrong because X, Y Z and..." and defend really existing socialisms, not pull a Chomsky and critique US imperialism but then at the same time oops, you're repeating state department talking points about "communist thugs" and "authoritarianism" every chance you get. https://redsails.org/on-chomsky/ The high perch from which Chomsky tells us how free we are was likely only vacant because state agents murdered all consequential Black leaders and squashed every other left-wing movement. In the ensuing years, white guys writing books supplanted visionaries with megaphones while the prison population grew.
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May 14, 2021 21:48
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I think Chomsky is a good entryway into leftism, but at some point you need to move past him. I think there was some popular Brazilian youtuber who started with his books and is now reading stuff like Bakunin. It's incredibly sad to see him brought out in his senile state to support whatever ghoulish point is being made. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 14, 2021 22:00
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the mods are deficient in every vitamin except R
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May 14, 2021 22:09
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DirtyRobot posted:Just to be clear, my claim is that if you're in the US, you fight US propaganda. I'm just saying that in order to do so, you have to have some sense of what's actually going on beyond your immediate sphere. Like you need to be able to say, "No, sorry, gently caress off, your framing is wrong because X, Y Z and..." and defend really existing socialisms, not pull a Chomsky and critique US imperialism but then at the same time oops, you're repeating state department talking points about "communist thugs" and "authoritarianism" every chance you get. see i think this is still stepping into the trap, i don't need to offer support to be certain that the idea that us govt gives a flying gently caress about human rights is absurd don't need to answer the q. about whether china is really communist, or love juche to know that country that caused open air slave markets in libya and supports genocide in Palestine is acting cynically. instead of trying to determine who wears the white hat you can instead consider motives and consequences
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May 14, 2021 22:15
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Brain Candy posted:see i think this is still stepping into the trap, i don't need to offer support to be certain that the idea that us govt gives a flying gently caress about human rights is absurd something i think about a lot is a circa 2019 (i think) interview two of the chapo hosts had with some famous news guy, and one of them is like "health care should be less expensive" and the news guy IMMEDIATELY shoots back with something like "oh you want to be a failed state like venezuela???" which is to say that i actually think liberals do understand at some level what the ultimate stakes of conversations like these are, and are quite disciplined about systematically stripping away everything that could serve as a signpost or positive example such that you end up retreating to this toothless "neither washington nor moscow" posture from which all you can do is react and complain
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May 14, 2021 23:46
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AnimeIsTrash posted:I think Chomsky is a good entryway into leftism, but at some point you need to move past him. I think there was some popular Brazilian youtuber who started with his books and is now reading stuff like Bakunin. chumpsky is a blathering piece of poo poo cia plant (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 00:36
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He's a liberal, yes
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May 15, 2021 02:11
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I don’t know why an internationalist position simply can’t be that the West itself is a special case simply because it is hegemonic and therefore more dangerous. For example, during the First World War, the allies were ultimately in an advantageous position by 1917 simply because the US had entered the war and therefore the Soviets being overly concerned with Germany was moot. If anything, it is arguable the Soviets would be in a better position if neither side had won and the belligerents had simply ground each other to dust. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 02:21
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DirtyRobot posted:It's just a way of saying that when you look at a "thing" you're always failing to understand the thing because you can't really separate or abstract it out from the larger processes of which it is a part. Dialectics looks at particular thing ⤍ universal ⤍ return to particular thing with new understanding of why that particular thing appears the way it does. I'm staring at this and scratching my head like a cartoon chimp but thank you and god bless you for trying. I've now accepted that as a certified dumb rear end theory is Not For Me
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May 15, 2021 03:31
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some plague rats posted:I'm staring at this and scratching my head like a cartoon chimp but thank you and god bless you for trying. I've now accepted that as a certified dumb rear end theory is Not For Me If it makes you feel better that's less actual theory and more the philosophical underpinnings of it; its like explaining quantum mechanics compared to "this is how you wire a circuit breaker"
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May 15, 2021 03:33
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I hate that so many socialists refer to it as theory instead of just books. it has this implication that it’s more than just reading a book and then also trying to apply what you read to your work. it also always fetishizes books written by marxists who are called that because they work in academia and write academic books about marxism and not people like Jane mcalevy who isn’t a Marxist but whose writing and ideas despite some shortcomings have way more value to any actual work marxists would or should be doing
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May 15, 2021 03:45
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just read stalin
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May 15, 2021 04:08
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https://twitter.com/roun_sa_ville/status/1393284273088651266?s=19 Lmao
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May 15, 2021 04:36
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May 15, 2021 04:39
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here's three classic texts on dialectics https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm trotsky's is the shortest and snappiest and so maybe the best introductory read. stalin lays things out very clearly but also goes on at great length (although you can just stop after the first few parts). mao's might be my favorite because i think he goes the farthest in unifying the philosophy and empiricism like a lot of marxist theory, this stuff seems at first blush like a tangential addendum to the real meat of the socialist struggle, but then once you understand it you start seeing it everywhere and feeling like it's crucially important
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May 15, 2021 04:40
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May 15, 2021 05:01
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May 15, 2021 05:09
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May 15, 2021 05:14
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Ferrinus posted:here's three classic texts on dialectics Shut up already
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May 15, 2021 06:02
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apropos to nothing posted:I hate that so many socialists refer to it as theory instead of just books. it has this implication that it’s more than just reading a book and then also trying to apply what you read to your work. it also always fetishizes books written by marxists who are called that because they work in academia and write academic books about marxism and not people like Jane mcalevy who isn’t a Marxist but whose writing and ideas despite some shortcomings have way more value to any actual work marxists would or should be doing it's not exactly the same style of reading as curling up with infinite jest (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 06:05
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although you do both to make people think you are better
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May 15, 2021 06:06
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Ardennes posted:I don’t know why an internationalist position simply can’t be that the West itself is a special case simply because it is hegemonic and therefore more dangerous. Agreed, it is simply absurd to look at geopolitics from an internationalist perspective without considering that 80% of the wealth is horded in the global north
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May 15, 2021 06:19
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I just want to get paid and have some fuckin healthcare! I will not read a novel by some nerd whose adherents have accomplished jack poo poo in living memory. I don't need a philosophy degree to get that unionizing makes life better for everyone
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May 15, 2021 06:55
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some plague rats posted:I just want to get paid and have some fuckin healthcare! I will not read a novel by some nerd whose adherents have accomplished jack poo poo in living memory. I don't need a philosophy degree to get that unionizing makes life better for everyone https://www.mises.org (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 07:01
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THS posted:good idea can we turn this into the warhammer 40k lore discussion thread if wh40k lore is anything to go by, the only thing stalin ever did wrong was dying.
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May 15, 2021 07:11
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some plague rats posted:I just want to get paid and have some fuckin healthcare! I will not read a novel by some nerd whose adherents have accomplished jack poo poo in living memory. I don't need a philosophy degree to get that unionizing makes life better for everyone it's fun to pwn the ferrinus-types i meet in real life by asking what their specific plan to do something is, because the answer is always posting basically, and not something like trying to unionize their workplace or whatever.
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May 15, 2021 07:13
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May 15, 2021 07:14
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some plague rats posted:I just want to get paid and have some fuckin healthcare! I will not read a novel by some nerd whose adherents have accomplished jack poo poo in living memory. I don't need a philosophy degree to get that unionizing makes life better for everyone well in the first place i would point out that adherents of marx et al have accomplished much more than "jack poo poo" in living memory in the second place this doesn't and shouldn't take a philosophy degree, and in fact marxist thinking often comes easier to laborers or inmates than to people who've been absorbed into academia in the third place, unionizing makes life better for everyone including, in the long run, the capitalists. it's not bad, obviously, but many of lenin's rivals in the russian workers' movement were precisely those people who thought the economic struggle for higher wages was all the socialist movement needed (as opposed to trained and disciplined "professional revolutionaries", a willingness to treat national, religious, and agrarian issues as having the same importance as factory issues, etc). unfortunately default ideology is bourgeois ideology and in the absence of rigorous political education even militant worker activists with the best of intentions will slide into liberalism
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May 15, 2021 07:22
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here are three assigned readings before I engage any further no I will not contextualize them and furthermore,
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May 15, 2021 07:25
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Ferrinus posted:in the third place, unionizing makes life better for everyone including, in the long run, the capitalists. it's not bad, obviously, but many of lenin's rivals in the russian workers' movement were precisely those people who thought the economic struggle for higher wages was all the socialist movement needed (as opposed to trained and disciplined "professional revolutionaries", a willingness to treat national, religious, and agrarian issues as having the same importance as factory issues, etc). unfortunately default ideology is bourgeois ideology and in the absence of rigorous political education even militant worker activists with the best of intentions will slide into liberalism Larry Parrish posted:it's fun to pwn the ferrinus-types i meet in real life by asking what their specific plan to do something is, because the answer is always posting basically, and not something like trying to unionize their workplace or whatever. 
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May 15, 2021 07:46
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he's actually right for once but I meant wordy dipshits who don't know anything besides books they've read, not really him specifically
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May 15, 2021 07:55
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Larry Parrish posted:he's actually right for once but I meant wordy dipshits who don't know anything besides books they've read, not really him specifically Yeah that description definitely doesn't sound like Ferrinus!! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 08:00
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read capital, it isnt as hard as anyone makes it out to be its just long but marx is literally funny. if you dont want to, then read wage labor and capital its 20 pages (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 08:12
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i guess if you wanted to know my short term "plan" it would be to try to pull as many workplace unions, tenant unions, neighborhood groups, etc into the anti-police movement but this is obviously informed by all the crap i've read. i don't think everyone has to do the same but you do both yourself and the material a disservice by assuming that it's either unimportant or beyond you
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May 15, 2021 08:15
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unions in some european countries end up helping capitalists by keeping wages for highly skilled industrial engineers and professionals lower than their equally skilled us-equivalents in the name of wage solidarity this has not stopped the capitalists from progressively automating out the line workers and staying competitive with cheaper technical workers while hiring consultants when they lack the knowledge/skills for a project or temps when they lack the labour
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May 15, 2021 09:13
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Ferrinus posted:dialectics is very much not a thing everybody does. most people are idealists this was a few pages ago but it still bugs me that i don’t know if anybody pointed out that dialectics is not inherently opposed to idealism at all, like with hegel (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 09:33
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My own comprehension of dialectical materialism that its akin to something like understanding what a computer program is doing; you have a button on screen and you press it and it plays a ping noise. But that's not really what it is doing, you have to peel it back and look at the code; it has calls and functions that draw things on your screen and plays a sound file when a click is noted in a specific screen area. But that is also not what is really happening; you peel it back more and you're dealing now with memory locations being accessed, with how the entire operating system actually works, what the lowest levels of the computer's brain are doing, then the material reality of the computer being a bunch of magnetic bits being fliped via an array of nand logic gates and even then you can get into the physical properties of the need for copper and silicone and electricity all to describe exactly what happens to cause you to think you're clicking a button and playing a ping noise. It's not that this results in some understanding more true than just going "well you click a button and it goes ping", but if, for instance, the program has some bug in it that makes it break, or perhaps is doing something nefarious and hidden, then the only way you could hope to discover the actual truth of what this thing is doing is to peel back those layers and then put them back on with a new understanding. Surface appearance ⤍ hidden essence ⤍ truth behind the surface appearance then becomes Machine that goes ping ⤍ code that does a lot of fucky things without telling you ⤍ Machine mails your porn to all your peers and goes Ping The other half of my understanding of it is the epistemological notion that the answer to the whole ship of Theseus problem is to go "there never was a 'ship of Theseus', you just thought there was". I understand it this way because I'm philosophically illiterate, and its totally wrong so if someone could rework it to be actually accurate I'd be appreciative. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 09:53
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marxism is like a computer
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May 15, 2021 11:26
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if you never read theory for yourself then you're entirely dependent on either your own dumb brain figuring things out or some interlocutor to fill you in on how things really work, and that way lies poo poo like trots and breadtube "socialism means supporting the democrat party unconditionally" bullshitters so read theory, kids. will save you a lot of grief in the long run (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 11:31
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apropos to nothing posted:marxism is like a computer dont ever program, it makes you dumb as hell (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 15, 2021 11:31
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