|
Recently finished the Conquest of Bread and wanted 2 give my trip report. Overall I liked it. I think Kropotkin's weakest bits were where he talks about how the bougie will just give up their mansions when it becomes clear that thier servants will not tend them for them. I think he has a lot of faith in spontaneous organization and expropiation of food, housing and clothing. I'm a bit more of an 'authortarian' than him and think that some kind of governing organ will be needed to keep things kind of in order However I think his bits on how stupid it is to assume that people will just foist off their work onto others is great. The stuff about how laziness is just a result of people being taught lovely or forced to do things they super don't want to do its great and almost made me cry. Real ahead of his time stuff. I also think that his bits on how we should be looking at what someone needs and wants to consume and figure out how to fit production towards that, rather than the opposite, is real big brain poo poo. Also the stuff on 'its stupid to try to put a value on labor since its impossible to say whose job is more important since A) all work is the result of every single person involved or who lived before and B) doing so would work to create a lovely class divide' is loving chef's kiss mwah. book's good and I wanna read some Mao now to shore up the other side of my wacky political philosphy. But before that I think I'm gonna read Zinn's People's History since I started it and also have the physical copy right here.
|
#
¿
May 2, 2021 23:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 20, 2024 23:54 |
|
|
Epic High Five posted:Mao is a good followup, as Mao more or less figured out and addressed all modern contradictions and reactionary counter-currents, but more specifically I would probably recommend State and Revolution by Lenin, which addresses much you mentioned here. Going Kropotkin -> Lenin -> Mao also has the benefit of learning along the lines of the actual revolutions of the time Yee. I was debating doing S&R before diving into Mao. My friend who recently went on a theory kick also found S&R slightly more useful than Contradictions. Though too be fair he was mostly annoyed at S&R feeling like lefttwitter infithing and Contradictions being overly philosophical. What he gave a glowing review for is Suicidal Revoluintary, which I plan to read after going through Zinn and the Theory Boys. I'm witholding my own judgment on S&R and Contradictions for now, but I think I'm gonna be rolling my eyes at Lenin Old Man Shouting at Clouds. As for Contradictions I feel like I'm gonna find more use in On Gurellia Warfare but we'll see After Suicidal I'm thinking about reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed or diving into Marcos's works, since I bookmarked both of them and can access them easily.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
Epic High Five posted:It isnt really that it is more useful, just that it is chronological order, with Leninism defeating a specific order for the reasons outlined, and Maoism defeating another for different reasons outlined, with each referencing and paying homage to the systems that preceded it Fair enough, fair enough. I'm looking forwards to them anyways, though I worry that S&R and Contradictions will be way denser reads than Conquest of People's History
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:i'm curious if the rejection of putting a value on labor is a more general ethical "dishwashers are not less valuable than engineers" thing or an attempt to directly refute or reject marx, who, classically, believed the value of labor-power as well as the value generated by labor to be extremely important A mix of both I think. K seems to be deeply offended by the idea of continuing the wage system in any form and sees it as inclimical to a Communist society. He also thinks that the idea of surplus value should not even exist, to quote my boy Pete K posted:stead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation; for, that a surplus-value should exist, means that men, women, and children are compelled by hunger to sell their labour for a small part of what this labour produces, and, above all, of what their labour is capable of producing. But this evil will last as long as the instruments of production belong to a few. As long as men are compelled to pay tribute to property holders for the right of cultivating land or putting machinery into action, and the property holder is free to produce what bids fair to bring him in the greatest profits, rather than the greatest amount of useful commodities — well-being can only be temporarily guaranteed to a very few, and is only to be bought by the poverty of a section of society. It is not sufficient to distribute the profits realized by a trade in equal parts, if at the same time thousands of other workers are exploited. It is a case of PRODUCING THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF GOODS NECESSARY TO THE WELL-BEING OF ALL, WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE WASTE OF HUMAN ENERGY.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
finished S&R, here are my thoughts: gently caress me that was a chore to read through. Lenin is not my favorite writer and he seems to have a fascination with block quotes that would make a college kid struggling to reach word count blush. I think there are valuable ideas in here, but I also think that if there is a work that updates them and puts them in a more readable language, Leninists and Marxists in general should urge people towards those works, rather than this one. On the topic of the actual work itself I liked it far better than I thought I would. Anyone who thinks that Lenin was in favor of the state, esp the Stalinite one that would follow him, is loving doofin. The entire piece is about how first the bougie electoral state must be destroyed and the proletarian state reduced until it is fully gone afterwards. I have some issues with this idea, but anarchist ideas that State and Rev is about how the state is good actually could not be further from the truth. In terms of the main body of work I broadly agree with Lenin that there needs to be some co-option of the organs of the bougie state in order to fully repress and destroy reactionary forces. A military will need to be built and a policing force of some kind created to prevent a reactionary counter-revolution from occuring. I am less rosy on Lenin's ideas that a simple disbanding of the standing army and the reduction in pay of bureaucrats will help this. While I agree that violence and coercion will be needed to protect the revolution, that does not mean I am rosy on the idea. The danger of these decayed and co-opted organs of the state being used to create a whole new authortarian state is a real one. This may just be a case of 'listen, this is the sandwhich with the least amount of poo poo in it so take a loving bite", but I think any anarchist who reads S&R and still has major reservations about the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat is well within their rights to have them. Over all I think S&R is an interesting and perhaps useful work, but I wish that it was written slightly more palatably. It had way less leftist twitter beefing than I thought, the the list of rando german names were long and my eyes glazed over on a lot of the letter to Babel poo poo. I have my worries about the transition from the first stage of communism, that is socialism, to the higher stages and I think that Lenin would probably take a different tone and tact if he knew what would come after him. Still, if you can handle the prose its worth a read, if only to make one think about the questions it raises.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2021 02:48
|
|