/lit/ - Literature

1984 is more poignant now than ever.

>>9284438
Didn't Orwell admit that 1984 and Animal Farm were just as much a critique of Western "democracies" as they were of Stalinism and Marxism.

>>9284445
Nope. Exclusively Marxism.

>>9284430

B R E A D

the FRANKFurt schol << evil guys

>>9284544
Orwell was literally a Trotskyist and fought for socialism in Spain

>>9284557
That was before he wrote Animal Farm and 1984. Experiencing the atrocities of Marxist thought first-hand compelled him to write against it.

>>9284557
I thought he became disillusioned with Marxism in general though. Historically, "Trotskyists" were just western 'communists' who didn't really follow Trotsky, and even denounced him for Kronstadt, advocating war with Poland, etc.

>>9284565
>Atrocities of Marxist thought
He saw the atrocities of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht in Spain against anarchists. It has nothing to do with Marxist "thought" - just global politics and Stalin.

>>9284573
>Red Army and the Wehrmacht
i.e Marxist Thought

>>9284565
>>9284567
He called for socialist revolution in England at the times he wrote those. He was mainly anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist.

>>9284580
No, he was anti-Stalinism, not anti-Marxism

>>9284580
>Wehrmacht and Red Army is Marxist
ANYTHING THE GOVERNMENT DOES IS SOCIALISM

>>9284581
He called for democratic socialist policy (à la Bernie Sanders). Not socialist revolution.

>>9284430
This thread has derailed. Anyone read this yet? I'm thinking of getting it.

>>9284586
>He was anti-Stalinsim
In other words, anti-Marxism.

>>9284592
Bernie Sanders isn't democratic socialist, he's a social democrat. Democratic socialists support armed revolution generally while social democracy aims for transitioning to socialism through reformism or working with capitalism.

type 'amen' if you love jesus

ignore and satan will get you

>>9284600
Lel. Only people who think Stalin was a Marxist are crusty virgins on the internet and the occasional Marxist-Leninist you meet handing out fliers about Assad.

>>9284610
amen

Communism is antithetical to human nature. If Marx read Darwin, communism would not exist.

>>9284629
I can't tell if you're being ironic.

>>9284610
amen

>>9284430
First off, make sure you have read at least the first book in Das Kapital and the paris manuscripts. (And preferably some Freud).
I would start with Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, since his extension of Marx's theory of alienation is really foundational for critical theory.

Then maybe Marcuse's Eros and Civilization for some freudo-marxism and some Althusser for the structuralist approach to marxism (start with Ideological State Apparatuses). Then read some of Lefebvre's work to see how he took Leftism in a completely different direction from the dominant structuralist reading in France at the time. Then move on to Debord's Society of the Spectacle which is really just the endgame and culmination of Lefebvre's and Lukacs' theories with a dash of surrealism. In '68 there hardly were more influential leftist theories. After this showstopper that may have left you in complete terror with the prospects of its analysis, maybe read Ranciére's 'The Emancipated Spectator', which really is a critique of the situationists.

Now I haven't touched on operaismo/autonomism, but perhaps check out some early Negri and Tronti to see another anti-authoritarian development of marxism at that time. The newer theories of Negri/Hardt in Empire, and Bifo, are more or less a natural progression from here.

If you've read your Freud (and have seen what Marcuse's did with him in regards to Marxism) and move on to read your Lacan, then check out Zizek's work (The Ticklish Subject, The Sublime Object of Ideology). Yes, I know he is a clown, but I think a lot of his academic work is also worth reading. Also, if you want to understand what Guattari/Deleuze are doing in Anti-Oedepus, you need to know Lacan since he is the basis that is destabilized in that work (and Guattari's work in general). Deleuze is incredibly hard to read and not at all your typical leftist but more of a classic philosopher. I think he is worth reading so by any means do it.

Now I haven't mentioned Foucault yet, but yes, he is very worth reading. I would read the first book of the history of sexuality for its general critique of power (it really is a concise version of Foucault's theory of power) and its influence on performative gender theory (see: Butler's Gender Trouble). Then I would read a couple of the college de france lectures on biopolitics, which is perhaps Foucault's most influential contribution.

Getting familiar with the concept of biopolitics also opens up for reading one of the most influential theorists right now, Giorgio Agamben. There is much more to him of course and he too is very difficult, but take a look at 'Means Without Ends' and maybe the first book of the homo sacer series. Then maybe check out Tiqqun, every leftist at my uni atm are cumming over their weird mix of Agamben's theories with situationism.

Of course many things have been left out (including a lot of the Frankfurt school) but this is just a primer off the top of my head. Have fun.

How about you read Mises and Rothbard before you commit intellectual suicide by willfully exposing yourself to the idiocy that is leftist propaganda

>>9284746
>this post

>>9284593
Trash for most people honestly. If you haven't read most of Freud and Lacan then it's going to be a waste of paper. If you haven't read most of Freud and Lacan then I suggest you do that ASAP anyway.

>>9284629
You know that ideas ... are inaccessible on the mortal plane right?

>>9284720
Is it worth reading Situationism if I've read literally no leftist texts about from some secondary sources and basic texts on and by Marx? I have a copy of Society of the Spectacle.

>>9284430
I suggest you come over to /pol/ and take the redpill instead

>>9284430
BOOKCHIN
O
O
K
C
H
I
N

>>9284629
I recommend actually reading Darwin.

politics won't fill the empty void in your life, and no revolution will fix it either.

>>9284430

"How to construct your very own echo chamber"

>>9284829
Whoa really?

>>9284438
So is 451, but I've already tried that argument and no one wants to listen.

>>9284445
I don't know about 84 but animal farm certainly is. The ending almost literally says that capitalists and communist dictators are equally evil.

>>9284430

Wait, you actually take left-wing literature seriously? Lel.

>>9284862
451 is probably the most important book in the post 2000 world.

I am with you brother

What is leftist worth ethic like? That is, within a capitalist society. If you go to work everyday with the understanding that you're being exploited it would be very difficult to get a lot done or even to enjoy work. You wouldn't be compelled to work your way up to a management position because then you would be a capitalist. And you definitely wouldn't want to start your own business. Seems like a very bad philosophy for social mobility.

>>9284430
>What literature do I read to get into modern left thought?
Alinsky.

>>9284762
Yes. Situ are good.

Apocalypse baby for fiction
Mark fisher for cultural criticism
Constructivists for theory

>>9284610
>be atheist
>love the literary figure of Jesus though. Specially after studying the political climate of the era and notice christianity's relation to the disgusting religion called judaism
>John the Revelator is cooler, sure, Revelations is an amazing BTFO piece against the kikes, but the figure of Jesus was pretty cool too, what with the Good Samaritan and the thing with the tables and his rules against usury and whatnot
>on the other hand, absolutely adore Milton's Satan. Possibly my favorite character in literature
What do?

Amen, but I still love you, Satan?

>>9284922
Recognize that Milton's Satan is not the biblical Satan and learn to walk and chew bubblegum.

>>9284928
>Milton's Satan is not the biblical Satan
wat

Nigger, he's literally the snek. No step on snek.

>>9284629
Marx praised Darwin.

>>9284922
>>9284930
do u watch movies and think theyre real 2

>>9284943
Read the first line of my first post.

Milton's Satan is the biblical Satan. Neither of which is real.

>>9284949
Milton's Satan isn't in the Bible. It is not the Biblical Satan in that sense. That you like the depiction of Satan in Paradife Loft doesn't mean you like his depiction in the Bible. They are, essentially, two different creations, two different characters - even if they are both based on a real, existing Satan.

>>9284956
Milton's Satan is based directly on the Satan of Genesis and of jewish tradition.

You could say Milton's Satan is the biblical Satan, whereas the biblical Satan might not be, as one hard-depends on the other and not vice-versa.

>>9284962
stop using semantics that apply to a different situation

>>9284720
Thanks for your earnest reply

>>9284587
If they're national socialists or stalinists, what do you think?

What is leftist work ethic like? That is, within capitalist society. If you go to work everyday with the understanding that you're being exploited it would be very difficult to get a lot done or even to enjoy work. You wouldn't be compelled to work your way up to a management position because then you would be a capitalist. And you definitely wouldn't want to start your own business. Seems like a very bad philosophy for social mobility.

>>9284430
>Should I read Deleuze or Foucault? Please don't suggest the charlatan Zizek.

If you think zizek is a charlatan then Foucault abd Deleuze are even worse.

>>9284607
>marxism, neo-marxism and post-marxism
>a bunch of post modern cancer and barely any economics

>>9284607
>critique of critical critique
what

>>9285049
t. dude who binge-watches jordan peterson

>>9285019
sabotage

The third way by Giddens is a good overview of the centrist, market orientated ideas that have influenced western "left wing" political parties from Bill Clinton and Blair onwards.

pic related is gold

>>9284430
Mein Kampf.

Nazis were socialists.

>>9285019

You get a job teaching at a university where you don't have to feel bad about being comfortably middle class. That way you don't have to do any of that nasty manual labor stuff the real proles do.

>>9285087
I hate Peterson with a passion, but that doesn't change the fact that having a proper understanding of economics to be a proper leftist.

>want to read left wing literature
>have to buy the book

>>9285166
what a novel insight...we have to buy and sell things to survive in this moment...damn
it's almost like the totality of capitalism subjugates us all...leftists btfo by based smug anime girl
i hate marx now

>>9284629
>le human nature

>>9284565
I don't know if that's true but OP, you can read Koestler (for example The Yogi and the Commissar) which is a really good critique of the USSR while still being true to his leftist principles.

Drumpf. Am I right?

Does /lit/ actually care about workers? If so, why?

>>9284629
if you'd read Darwin that post wouldn't exist

>>9284430
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

Trust me, it's amazing.

>>9285289
It really is funny when anticapitalists use Apple products, as Apple has the worst working conditions and lowest wages of American companies in China.

>>9285382
;^)

>>9285289
damn...it's like...acknowledging the innate hypocrisy of your political stance is the same as doing something to correct it...no pasaran...

>>9284544
This post is fake news.

...Wat

>>9284430
I have other books in my list, but these are some

Confronting Empire Eqbal Ahmad
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels
A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze
The Organized Community by Juan Domingo Peron
The Capital by Karl Marx
Permanent Revolution by Leon Trotsky
Bakunin on Anarchy
The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic Years, Murray Bookchin
What is Property. An inquiry into the principle of right and of government by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin
The Accumulation of Capital by Rosa Luxemburg
What Is to Be Done and Other Writings by Vladimir Lenin
Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski (I know is the unabomber, but not by coincidence, he was previously a victim of MK ULTRA)
Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker
Anarchy by Errico Malatesta
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (he was against monopolies and the division of labor)
Essays in Fabian Socialism by George Bernard Shaw
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics by Ernesto Laclau
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

>>9284607
Post-marxism should be moved to a Post-left section which should then be increased with people like Bob Black, Hakim Bey and left accelerationist guys.

Also, should reduce the Zizek and increase Frankfurt (namely, Benjamin) and add Civil War on France, a very important text by late-Marx our oblivious Leninist friends seem bent on ignoring because Marx goes against their dictatorship-disguised-as-freedom in it.

>>9284629

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy - Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau

Lean Out - Dawn Foster

The Communist Hypothesis - Alain Badiou

Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher

The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View -
Ellen Meiksins Wood

Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises -Anwar Shaikh

>>9284610
amen

>>9285722
Look in a Tescos dumpster some time. Boxes of perfectly good products, thrown out because they didn't shift quickly enough or went 1 hour past sell-by date. Meanwhile people are waving WILL WORK FOR FOOD signs one street away.

>>9286373
>advocating eating out of the trash rather than just redistributing wealth, guaranteeing jobs, ending exploitation, and abolishing private property

Anon surely there must be a better way than this

>>9285049
sounds about right ;^)

Can someone explain the constant stream of Marxist criticism and thought applied to every aspect of life?

It's always appeared to me as just a way to keep the academic wheels turning, but im curious to know if any advances in for example state planning or the mechanics of a stable revolution have come out of it all

>>9284750
Fine, fool. Run away from reality and encourage others to follow you.

>left wing literature thread

I remember when I was 16 too, OP

>>9286468
>guaranteeing jobs

Oh I do agree anon, we absolutely should bring back the workhouse

>>9284610
amen

Also the Child's Guide to...whatever you're outraged about today series.

>>9285383
having a smartphone is essential to survive in today's job market. all smartphone manufacturers have terrible working conditions. your point?

>>9287088

>>9287157
nice argument

>>9287163
thanks, comrade

>>9286688
woke twenty-two year old

>>9287259
class conscious eight-teen year old

>>9287271
You human-biodiversity-conscious too?

>>9284610
amen

حکومت اسلامی Tbh

>>9284430
Why are all marxists and communists aren't even proles?

>>9284430
Monthly Review my man.

The magazine itself is milquetoast but good info and they have some choice contemporary books.

Marxism is definitely a school of literally progressive thought and one should read the older texts but definitely don't get locked into only history.

>>9285374
To use them for their own ends, just like everyone everywhere ever. Nobody likes workers for anything else because they are an illiterate mass of barely human sub 80 IQ monkeys that every know and then vote to decide who handles their money.

>>9284610
Amen

>>9287088
>having a smartphone is essential to survive in today's job market. all smartphone manufacturers have terrible working conditions. your point?

Are you so profoundly retarded that you really think a "smartphone" is a necessity nowadays, or does uneducated filth spew all by itself from your millenial cuck-hole?

>>9287780
t. NEET
a mobile phone of some sort is definitely needed (smartphone or not). there is not a mobile phone manufacturer on the planet without bad working conditions

>>9285019
Work ethic is a spook :^)

>>9284430
Mein Kampf

>>9287798
>a mobile phone of some sort is definitely needed (smartphone or not).

I guess its hard to organise cuckolding parties with all your bearded friends when you don't have constant contact to your twitter account.

>>9284607
this is so corny and im so glad im not a part of it

>>9285383
It actually makes sense, since they are manufactured by their fellow comrades in socialist China. Gotta support the revolution!

Chirbes was a marxist and a god-tier novelist. Read On The Edge.

>>9284720
Thank you, thank you for this answer.

Honestly, I'd read 1984 and then read Rand. Why? Because you need balance. Reading the same ideas over and over that do not challenge you doesn't do shit for your brain.

>>9287861
I would agree, but my idea of balance and exposing yourself to new ideas would certainly not be just reading fucking 1984 and Rand. This post is almost definitely bait anyway.

>>9287884
Examples Anon, just examples. Reading far and wide is the key to a sharp mine and smart ideas.

>>9284908
You hit the right premises, but the wrong conclusion.

There is no conclusion, but leftists should come up with more applied theory on business and commerce (yes, I mean it).

In this day and age capitalism is the boat we sail, we may as well change the captain.

>>9285133

Anyone have any suggestions to study more about Green and Christian anarchism, aside from Tolstoy, Gandi, and the bible? I just discovered Jacques Ellul but I have to wait about 3 weeks until I get paid to get some of his writings, and even then I wouldnt know where to start with his writings.

>>9284544
" The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
-George Orwell in his essay "Why I write" (1946)

Once you've read Animal Farm you begin to understand that he heavily dislikes Napoleon, or Josef Stalin, while he holds both Old Major (or Marx and Lenin) and Snowball (Trotsky) very high. It's a critique on Josef Stalin and Stalinism, probably motivated by what Orwell experienced in Catalonia during the fighting in Barcelona (and the mass-arresting of POUM members by Stalinist troops).

He has never been "disillusioned" with Marxism, he has rather stood up for the basic human rights that everyone deserves. An easier way for retards to look at Orwell is that to see Animal Farm and 1984 as a critique on totalitarian states, not just the Sovjet union but also as a critique on Hitler, Franco and other totalitarian leaders.

>>9288009
Also, any sort of anarchism is interesting to me as well, but not as important as Green and Christian to me. I am planning on becoming as ascetic as I am able to be after purchasing a small (maybe 40 acres) of land and starting a self sustaining farm, so any books about advanced farming techniques and animal husbandry would be nice, but not necessary at this time.

>>9286327
Nice. Is necessary to understand capitalism from the left point of view.

>>9287466
Speaking of monthly reviews, someone should make a monthly review of literary criticism from a marxist perspective here on /lit/.

I know many of you read a lot of gazettes, journals or blogs, can you like, make a review for us here?

>>9285017
>national socialists
>marxists

You're either underage or American.

>>9287813
t. NEET

>>9284610
amen

Anyone ever read bookchin? Should I dive into the next revolution or should I get some background in anarchism?

>>9284610
Amen!

>>9285289
>le strawman
What bothers me isn't that they have cell phones and are wearing clothes. Even north koreans pay for cell phones and clothes. It's that they are usually using the most expensive phones, wearing the most expensive clothes, and then bitching that they don't make enough money.

I make $26/hr and I still can't afford the brands that they regularly wear and use, and yet somehow they need more money. It shows that they are spoiled rotten brats and don't have a single fucking clue what they are talking about.

>>9284610
amen

So what actually went wrong for communism in the 20th century? I understand that communism has never actually existed as it was meant to exist according to Marx, but when I look at the 20th century it seems like communists had more than enough power, land, capital and people to implement communism. Why didn't it work? Are we going to see the same death tolls just for another failed revolution?

>>9289200
there were a lot of important splits and where to draw an emphasis depends on how deterministic your philosophy.

it can be oversimplified into german v russian marxism. russell jacoby wrote an overview from this perspective called the Dialectic of Defeat.

a more narrow view could be the history of the frankfurt school vs stalinism.

a death toll after a revolution depends on multiple conditions from how the party views the vanguard to cultural mores of the country to what kind of socialist structure capitalism is replaced with.

a death toll is not dependent on any political system. the libertines killed a whole bunch and so did the nazis. the vietnamese didn't really go in for it but the cambodians did.

>>9284445
My grandpa says he was a commie

>>9285166
>buy
Fucking seize it godamit

>>9289229
>a death toll is not dependent on any political system
But clearly death tolls vary between different ideologies in direct correlation to their tendencies toward or away from violence

>>9289292
mm. i'm not sure i agree with that. the recent civil war in sri lanka saw buddhist atrocities in contradiction to their religion. then there is the varying degrees of violence within the same ideologies. i don't think ideology is generally a good predicted of atrocity.

>>9284835
>implying /lit/ isn't an echochamber
Noice.

>>9284430
Depends. The big leftist ideologies in the US are neo-liberalism, neo-marxism and intersectional feminism. The last two have quite some overlap. Which one do you want to get into?

>>9289695
Give me reading lists for both

>>9284720
How can I familiarize myself with freud and lacan?

>>9289707
Get readers for both. There's plenty at my uni library. If you're a NEET or just have a pleb life, you can go on libgen and find some.

>>9289707
>>9289712
http://libgen.io/search.php?req=freud+reader&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def

http://libgen.io/search.php?req=lacan+reader&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def

>>9289720
thanks, i love you

>>9289699
>Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction by Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy
The Great Persuasion - Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression by Angus Burgin
The Money Mandarins: Making of a Supranational Economic Order by Wachtel, Howard M.
The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis by John L. Campbell & Ove K. Pedersen

>Neo-Marxism
The Essential Frankfurt School Reader by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt
Critique, Norm, and Utopia - A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory by Seyla Benhabib
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Paperback by Cary Nelson, Lawrence Grossberg
Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Studies in Marxism and Social Theory) by G. A. Cohen
Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence by G. A. Cohen

>Intersectional Feminism
Feminist theory: from margin to center by bell hooks
Ain't I a Woman? by bell hooks
The complexity of intersectionality by McCall, Leslie
I am a Woman and a Human: A Marxist Feminist Critique of Intersectionality by E. Mitchell
Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color by Crenshaw, Kimberlé W.

>>9289753
B-but I'm not allowed to have feelings for you gentiles...

>>9284430
How is Zizek a charlatan?

>>9289200
They tried to do Socialism in One Country which is not really possible. The means of production were also not really advanced enough for Communism, I think that something approaching FALC is the only possible version of Communism.

>>9289791
>Has never had a rigid political outlook
>Literally just makes synopses rather than real critical theory
>"Ehf you'll allow me to prefesh zhis with a dirty joke, and sho on, the Other Phallus Zeitgeist Fisting..."
>Lacanian
>He doesn't really even seem like a Hegelian in the slightest

>>9289695
>Leftist
>neo-liberalism

>>9289817
Well they are running on leftist platforms and they use actual leftists as useful idiots. I know they aren't actually leftists, but that is irrelevant for OP.

>>9284445
Orwell's critique was only about capitalism, Marxism, Stalinism, et cetera by consequence.

To Orwell, it does not matter what ideology which the oligarchy goes by, for the sufficient condition in creating 1984's hell-scape is the use of "double think" and the belief that reality only exists in the human mind and is therefore controllable by way of "tearing human minds into pieces and putting them back together into shapes of your choosing."

>>9284758
You do know what... anomalous monism is, right?

>>9289271
Hey comrade, I will be over at your house in a minute to seize all of our property and take it to our house that you don't know about to utilize it for my self. I'll be making a collectivized fire where we will be burning our belongings to keep warm and so those filthy capitalists don't complain about the destruction of "their" property.

>>9289200
Nationalism and the predominance of crude productivist theories. Every "communist" movement was really a nationalist project to develop a state economy by means of strong central government control.
China today is the truest form of Marxist-Leninism in practice, the entire population has successfully been subordinated to "developing the productive forces" and it's "working" since China has become the industrial centre of the world.
A real communist movement must be about the elimination of abstract labour by minimizing socially necessary work time but that doesn't mean technophilia it means firstly revolutionizing the relations of production.
In retrospect, beyond statism as such, a lot of things weren't understood sufficiently (e.g. you can't make a peoples economy by just nationalizing the rubber-petro-automobile complex that capitalist engineers created for profit). The issues faced today are very different from industrializing peasant societies. At this point in time capital has successfully become totally autonomous and penetrated every sphere of life altering the earths geopsychology.

Try reading some of Will Barnes (left-communist orientation) writings on 20th century "communism" here: https://intcssc.wordpress.com/texts/
"Bolshevism, Stalin and the Stalinist Era in Soviet History at its Origins" and "The Debate over Capitalism and the “Leap Over” the Capitalist Mode of Production in the Periphery of the World System of Social Relations" are worth reading.

>>9284430
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/140

>>9284438
What shit. Talk about a Reddit/NPR Hyperbole narrative. The recent events have if anything demonstrated the power of democratic institutions, or if you prefer, entrenched bureaucracies. There are absolutely no parallels between 1984 and current events anywhere, except MAYBE Turkey, and that is a huge fucking stretch.

>>9284862
Because that is a garbage argument too. I can cheerfully purchase the most anti-government pro terrorist literature shit all day, and fucking no-one can stop me, to say nothing of online content. One thing about the US is that the censorship of actual information does not exist.

You two disgust me.

COMRADE WHY AREN'T YOU READIN ANTON PANNEKOEK [Workers Councils]

>>9289935
forgot pic.

>>9289798
None of this makes him a charlatan unless:
>He's ever claimed to have a rigid political outlook
>Claims to have ever made real critical theory
>Claims to be fully Hegelian

It sounds more like you disagree with him, and so label him a charlatan.

>>9284567

He did. One of his later pieces was a review of Hayek's Road to Serfdom and he was largely in agreement with the points made here by Hayek.

>>9284430

Foucault is a fraud who took and abused the work of Nietzsche, turning a conceptual tool into an all-explanatory and systematic theory of power ("biopower") that was unfalsifiable and entirely grounded in the world of metaphysical abstraction (i.e. an exercise in intellectual masturbation that people somehow take seriously, probably because the excess of technical terms, obfuscation, and convoluted language make people feel intelligent for understanding it). But truly, it provides a perfect example of what sophistry is, and also the dangers of hyper rationalisation of things (and how they detach you from the world as it is, so intent do you become on seeing the world in this completely abstracted way). The whole concept of biopower is either a worthless platitude (people and the networks they develop spread power into every pore of society, so no person cannot be oppressed by something), or a completely singular interpretation of reality with no basis for it aside from Foucault's febrile imagination, and the desire for most people to feel they are being oppressed by something, and their desire to claim they are being oppressed by "hierarchies of power" without having to bother with things like proof (making it a self-serving dogma, a fertile soil on which ideologues and fanatics can breed, and even, change the structures of "biopower", and develop new systems of oppression to counter past oppression).

This stuff is garbage, seriously. Nietzsche detested systematisers, and would have been appalled at what dogmatists like Foucault had made of his work. The purposely vague concept of Will to Power (nothing more than natural assertiveness of matter and energy) was never meant to be systematized like this--it makes the whole concept into a kind of complicated nonsense, completely detached from reality and the actual circumstances which people inhabit.

>>9289091
Why not Post-Scarcity Anarchism?

>>9284720
>Now I haven't touched on operaismo/autonomism, but perhaps check out some early Negri and Tronti to see another anti-authoritarian development of marxism at that time. The newer theories of Negri/Hardt in Empire, and Bifo, are more or less a natural progression from here.


("Negri and Hardt")

hahahaha, please don't tell me you take their garbage seriously. Since when does taking a platitude (there being global networks of power--well, duh), and building a system around it, filled with the most convoluted of language and continuous perversion of clear thinking, worth 400 pages of quasi-metaphysical abstraction?

I actually largely agree with their thesis, but that does not justify 400 pages of sanctimonious and pseudo-intellectual waffle, which is what Empire is. One can glean the point of that book after reading 50 pages and the conclusion, and one could write a summary of all its main points in less than 10. So why all the pointlessly convoluted dross? What is it aside from self-indulgent, narcissistic, intellectual masturbation?

>>9286503
Interpreting Marxism through a post-modernist lens means you can produce endless pages of nonsensical garbage, because you can deny the existence of objective value, but then absorb the interpretive (or metaphysical) assumptions of Marx, making it easy to justify more or less whatever you want to justify, but under the guise of its being academic or "intellectual"--it is a marriage of the utmost convenience, and appeals to people because it makes them feel intelligent and important (some of them were intelligent for sure, but most of their followers are imbeciles).

Thus one can produce endless permutations of what is effectively the same thing--Marxism provides the dogma, and postmodern subjectivism provides the infinite number of potential interpretations.

>>9289200

That it was Communism, meaning it was founded on a perverted and inaccurate assumption about the nature of man. There is a reason people predicted the horrors Revolutionary Marxism would produce--any doctrine that seeks to do away with the entire structure and fabric of a society, rather than building upon existing structures (like evolution does, like the human brain does, like successful human societies do) is doomed to become murderous and destructive beyond measure. Why? Because it is akin to tearing at the very nature of reality itself--you cannot do this without it pinging back and smacking you square in the face.

Kolowkowski, in his Main Currents of Marxism, did a very good job of showing how totalitarian domination was the natural endpoint of Marxist doctrine. Of course "true Communism" has never been tried--it can never and has never existed, because it defies the nature of man--it lives in the realm of intellectual abstraction, not of reality; it is impractical and imprudent beyond words; fundamentally, it is a pseudo-religion that takes its value judgements from Christianity itself, but perverting them to its own disgusting ends.

>>9289900
Bruh. I'm referring to PC culture's hand in publishing content getting too powerful. SJWs control mass media.

>>9290164
Equally retarded, considering the absolute schlacking the progressive left get in every election and the reaction from the centrist media to asshole students.

>>9290164
Would have agreed with you in 2014. The public is slowly waking up this bullshit though. They made their move in their strongest form and the backlash was so big that Donald Trump became president.

>>9284610
Amen!

Rosa Luxemburg

>>9290120
well. my best guess is power corrupts and no one is safe from it. thats why we are all anarchists now

That it. To >>>/pol/ with all of you, left and right! I'm sick of it!

It's always funny watch this board get fucking triggered when someone asks left or right leaning political books.

>>9284430
David Graeber is as good as it gets imho
if you are German or know someone who can translate "Das Ende der Megamaschine" by Fabian Scheidler really blew my mind

>>9284610
amen

>>9285722

>here's the thing about resources
>there's lots of them

Leftism is dangerous

>>9286373
The problem you have is with sell-by-dates then, not with capitalism.

>>9285130
THIS

as much as people like to portray the children of blair and bill clinton as left-wing they are unequivocal centrist.
If you want to understand the "left" wing politics of the past two decades (not including largely ineffectual academics etc but actual politicians) you need to loook at ideas that drove them to the centre ground.....like giddens.

>>9289873

This is all well and good. But tell me how it is possible to have revolutionary communism without it becoming what you described?

The issue is with revolution. You cannot form the stable forever utopia that communism requires using the means that communism does. It is simply not possible

>>9285722
>the goods just exist

>>9292243
So many marxists could be cured by a semester of economics.

>>9289091
Just go to Rojava and figure out how to apply Bookchin along with the Kurds while killing ISIS fucking shits.

>>9292257
t. freshman undergrad

>>9292096
pira/sinn féin proved that armed resistance can work.

>>9285166
marxists.org my negro

>>9287813
you're retarded

>>9292634
Not that Anon, but the issue with Communism is that it runs against basic Economic Principle. If you actually want to have a conversation about this I'd be willing to talk about it.

>>9291948
>>9292243
The thing I don't get is "scarcity is almost always fabricated". How do you even fabricate such a universal problem? Who's doing it? And "money isn't real"? I can prove that money is real by taking it from you and measuring your reaction.

>>9284430
>Smashie.png
How goes the raid, Comrade?
Seriously though, /leftypol/ and /pol/ need to leave.

https://8ch
.net/leftypol/res/1312944.html

>>9293205
I'm not a Commie but I can answer that last question. The idea that money is fabricated is that it does not inherently have any value, only the value we give it and therefor is not real or worthless. It's retarded but it does have some reason to it.

>>9293223
I agree with that but it only applies to fiat government money with a controlled supply. If free money exists outside of a monopoly, it's as real as any other good or service, with the value being directly decided by every individual that uses it and assigns a value to it through that use.

>>9293205
>>9293223
The answer to the first question is we are living in a world with excess. So it's the same way that diamond is "Not really rare" but the equivalence is false.

>>9293216

>>9293233
Most currency is fiat. While I do agree that the market gives value to everything the argument is that only good or service has value in a non capitalist society.

So why didn't communists just secede from capitalism instead of overthrowing it? Why didn't they just set up voluntary communal economies and get workers to join them? If communism is more efficient than capitalism, it could easily outcompete it.

>>9293601
Every Marxist will say it's impossible to compete with global capitalism in one country. Hence the imperialist method of Trotsky. Capitalism is more efficient in creating excess produce, but not efficient in meeting people's needs.

>>9293770
>creating excess produce
What do you mean by this? If something isn't profitable companies won't produce it. As there are no market signals, isn't it more likely that a centrally planned economy would produce excess?

>>9293770
>it's impossible to compete with global capitalism in one country
But if communism can abolish the class system and increase living standards for everyone, why wouldn't the masses immediately abandon capitalism to join the classless society? It doesn't matter if the entire world is capitalistic, if communism is in the best interest of the working class then a small, voluntary, classless community would be enough to destroy capitalism. It would disprove capitalism and fulfil the needs of workers. Workers would just join up voluntarily and imperialism wouldn't be needed.
>Capitalism is more efficient in creating excess produce, but not efficient in meeting people's needs.
If communism is better at meeting people's needs then why doesn't it exist? This is a fair question because an international revolution did happen, in dozens of countries, so why did it fail? It should be very easy for communism to outcompete capitalism if its fundamental claims are true.

>>9292731

They were not trying to overthrow the entire social order and establish total restructuring of society you utter idiot. They wanted rights, indepence, and unification with the south if they could get it.

T. Northern Irish person

Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan. The fact that this thread doesn't mention him is pathetic desu.

Marxism is outdated and has no influence or credibility anywhere outside of the 1800s.

>>9293896
It had influence in the 1900s

>>9292079

Sorry, but Blair is more of a radical than most people described as "left wing", far more so in fact. His is the radicalism of cross-state centralisation, which is the most radical force in the world today.

Barely restricted mass migration was completely unheard of in the UK before Blair tried to completely transform the demographics of his country. Favouring radical global governance (and global capitalism), and pursuing it by attempting to undermine national loyalties through mass immigration, is just a different form of leftism than traditional redistribute-the-wealth democratic socialism--far worse and far more destructive in my view. Traditional socialists are actually a good deal less radical than the likes of Blair and his fellow eurocommunists--much more honorable to. Give me a socialist over a Blairite any day of the week--at least socialists care about the wellbeing of the citizens over which they govern, unlike Blairites, who only seem to have contempt for the citizenry.

>>9292731

They didn't try to overthrow the entire social order dum-dum. Not at all comparable to Revolutionary socialism.

>>9294067

Do you have any reading materials about this with evidence as to this being the goal of Blair and his ilk?

I despise Blair for a whole host of reasons, I've just yet to see a convincing source on the "migrants to change demographics and allow for globalistic governance" statement.

>>9284607

>/pol/ reading tends to encompass studying history and philosophy
>redditard reading is all "communism is great" fantasies to support their confirmation bias without need for troublesome critical thinking

>>9294185
>>/pol/ reading tends to encompass studying history and philosophy

>>9294225

Indeed, looking through /pol/ archive for literature recommendations I find quite a lot more of essence than redditpol posters.

Shit, man, 50 books on the wonders of communism and none of them taught you how to move out of your moms house.

I think a lot of this stuff needs a 'primer' chart. Not necessarily leftist stuff, but reading Marx without having at least a bit of a graps on what Hegel was doing...? Reading Hegel without having a graps on philosophers before him and so on...

It's a bit of a meme but I can't see much point in reading a lot of these if you don't know a bit about greek philosophy, hegel, a fair amount of marx and then people like nietzsche, heidegger etc. (for continetal stuff anyway).

This is for more of the dense works posted anyway. Simpler novels or historical rundowns can be read and grasped without that.

>>9285162

if you have a proper understanding of economics you probably won't be a 'proper' leftist

t. someone interested in marxist ideas, sociology, critical theory etc but gets called a filthy capitalist by commie friends

>>9293170

it doesn't really run against economic principle, unless you are defining it as central planning (which is kinda fair since thats generally what it has been)

>>9294258
Post your bookshelves.

>>9294067

this is a load of tinfoil nonsense desu m8, half the reason for blair's govt allowed the influx of polish migration (without a waiting period like france or most other eu states) was because they severely underestimated the numbers they expected would move

not some secret plot to undermine civilisation

>>9294258

it's a piece of piss to buy a few books and make some charts based on a boring version of the western canon before 1900 with a few fascist books thrown in

a 13 year old could do it easily, and they do

>>9294258
Just because they created an archive for literature recommendations dosen't mean they actually read anything

I started off in my teens as an Objectivist and read nothing but right wing libertarian books before slowly moving over towards the left.

>>9294263

I'm at work, feel free to post yours.

Why is it that Communists generally don't read anything that isn't directly about communism? Are they afraid that an actual education might shatter their worldview?

>>9294287

>some solid standard conservative book suggestions
>young's meritocracy, interesting suggestion considering the previous
>suddenly dune, asimov, wolfe

nope

>>9294287
>Why is it that Communists generally don't read anything that isn't directly about communism?

Have you got any statistics for that claim?

>>9294287
I'm not a communist. I just think that it kind of voids your argument if you can't prove you're well read yourself.

>I'm at work
It also doesn't help your argument that you're shitposting when you're supposed to be working.

>>9294299

I'm just grabbing these off /pol/ , it's a pretty stark difference in just how much better they are than leftypol like >>9284607

They even get the good translations.

>>9284629
Darwin read Marx you fucking imbecile, you moron and he celebrated Das Kapital

>>9294312
>Comprehensive collection of leftist literature.
Is worse than
>Some universally known classics and many sci-fi books
Ebin

>>9294287
>Dune
>Starship troopers

Why would you put these in the same picture as books by Hobbes and Aristotle
eeeeh?

All practical iterations of Leftism rely on functionally mandatory lifelong employment and the worship of money just as much as all iterations of Capitalism do. All Leftist ideals of abolishing money or whatever are just as sketchy as the Capitalist ideal of the Market regulating itself.

>>9294310

>I just think that it kind of voids your argument if you can't prove you're well read yourself.

I think being able to pick a good book lineup from a bad one does it well enough, but the important thing is we are comparing two different communities here. Your attempts to attack my individual character hold little sway in a discussion about two polarized groups.

It also speaks volumes that /pol/ recommends people to read your bible too, presumably because they can, with the context of actually reading other books in their life, realize how fucking stupid your ideology is.

>It also doesn't help your argument that you're shitposting when you're supposed to be working.

You seem to be under the impression that my job requires me to work.

>>9294312

i don't see the problem with that list, it's a fairly solid collection of purely leftist thought

the 'golden pill' reading list is a really weird collection with nothing really tying them together aside from plato+aristotle going together and then hobbes+burke

and then suddenly sci-fi because uhhhh and young because uhhhh??

having read a fair amount of those i have no idea what the synthesis towards the 'golden pill' would be aside from being moderately conservative and against meritocracy

>>9294325
>I think being able to pick a good book lineup from a bad one does it well enough
More to the point, you've failed to do that in the last two line-ups. Both of which, particularly the second, were actually quite bad. You seem to more be dazzled by including classics in line-ups rather than actually understanding the book within.

>Your attempts to attack my individual character hold little sway in a discussion about two polarized groups.
Ah, but the thing is you're part of those groups. Surely since you are part of /pol/, and you think /pol/ is well read obviously to you your first sample of that would be yourself, so you ought to be well read in order to have come to that position.

>It also speaks volumes that /pol/ recommends people to read your bible too, presumably because they can, with the context of actually reading other books in their life, realize how fucking stupid your ideology is.
Once again, I'm not a communist.

>You seem to be under the impression that my job requires me to work.
Yes?

>>9294325
Why is the Turner Diaries, Christopher Hitchens, the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf all in the same square?

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

>>9294343

i means it says it's a list with no order and it's just as the suggestions came

it's a pretty bad list because completely worthless books are mixed in with classics and those who don't know any better will end up wasting time

>>9294267

Wrong, and easily disproven. Migration from non-EU states was far higher than from the entire EU, let alone merely Poles.

Oh yes, how tinfoil-like to think a government would pursue a policy that fits exactly with your own expicitly stated interests (global governance, global "humanitarian" interventionism, the destruction of concepts like national sovereignty, and so forth--these are explicit parts of the Blairite doctrine). Not to mention the belief that migratory transformation would make it impossible for a conservative government to ever gain office again (hence why Cameron and the Conservatives took up the Blairite mantra themselves). Thinking people pursue their deliberate self-interest and ideological aspirations somehow makes a person a conspiracy theorist now? How credulous can a person be to actually think this, seriously?

But by all means, keep denying empirical reality with your "tinfoil" non-argument.

>>9294327

>purely leftist thought

Yeah I doubt reading outside the spectrum would be good for a leftist since education would make them not be a leftist anymore.

>>9294335

>You seem to more be dazzled by including classics in line-ups rather than actually understanding the book within.

All about foundation. I wouldn't recommend somebody to study a particular philosophy without understanding the philosophers that influenced that philosophy. But again, I didn't make those lists, I'm only saying they're better than Commie shit.

>Surely since you are part of /pol/, and you think /pol/ is well read

I'm not a part of /pol/. I simply wanted to hold up /pol/ as the contrary to our distinguished visitors from reddit since you guys are always fighting.


>>9294343

You are a very dense and silly man.

>>9294355
>belief that migratory transformation would make it impossible for a conservative government to ever gain office again (hence why Cameron and the Conservatives took up the Blairite mantra themselves).

lol

having fairly high immigration is an empirical fact, as well as blair being a globalist

all the other tinfoil nonsense around supposed nefarious motives is not

>>9294169

Well, there's the testimony of a key advisor:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

That, along with the general impetus of Blair, which, in all cases, was to erode national sovereignty and create a truly global community, where the lead countries intervene in the world at will, and overthrow anyone who dares to oppose their dogma (e.g. his love for "humanitarian" war and regime change, in Iraq, in Kosovo, and in pretty much every single case for it there has been--he would've supported intervention in Libya and Syria and more--he is a damn maniac). I mean, with all this, and the plain fact that migration exploded to utterly unprecedented levels during his time in office, is pretty solid evidence. It's not like New Labour wasn't filled with sinister figures like Mandelson, Campbell, Blunkett, and so forth--it is exactly the sort of power play one would expect from these figures.

If it wasn't deliberate then it was the most incompetent thing any government has ever done.

>>9284557
>fought for socialism in Spain

fought against socialism*

Why you kids can't learn anything properly? It's so boring all these anticommunist propaganda.

>>9294363
>Yeah I doubt reading outside the spectrum would be good for a leftist since education would make them not be a leftist anymore.

silly non-sequitur, making one chart that collates some key leftist thought doesn't imply what you then say

the two lists you've posted have been woeful, you just don't like the one leftypol posted because you're opposed to it ideologically, rather than it being a bad list

>>9284557
He was just thrown in with the POUM because it was the only group he could sign up with he was always more along the DemSoc lines.

>>9294370

He was a globalist that brought UK migration levels to heretofore unprecedented levels (not "fairly high"--what dishonest gibberish). What more is there to say? I didn't assert anything more than that it was done deliberately (how could such a huge change in policy not be deliberate? Are you retarded or something?).

>>9294363
>All about foundation.
I understand that's what you think, but that's not what these lists are actually doing. The classics they contain are often presented seemingly at random with no connection to anything else there. This is why I'm saying these charts are made to look dazzling to plebs (and very likely made by plebs) rather than to actually get to grips with /pol/'s "philosophy".

>I'm not a part of /pol/.
If you say so.

>>9294363
>You are a very dense and silly man.

>>9294372
>Orwell fought against socialism
Where did you learn this?

>>9294386
>>9294370

Regardless of intent. Will the migration result in the political goals of unified world government?
Blaires state of sin is moot at this point.

>>9294386

You understand the concept that someone can do something intentionally with a motive that is entirely different to the one you perceive it to be, yes?

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/we-cant-reduce-mass-immigration-but-we-can-shrink-the-state/

>The graph also shows how recent this phenomenon is to Britain. It’s not, pace Neather, a Labour Party trick; similar trends can be seen in every European country. A wave of immigration hit around the millennium and hasn’t gone away. It has now evolved into a global trend of migration.

>>9294371

>key adviser
>speechwriter

lol?

>>9294401

Intent doesn't matter? Ok.

I doubt we're getting a unified government anytime soon, even if the Blairite trajectory had continued smoothly. Unless there's a major technological revolution that causes it (something my imagination can't fathom, so is silly to consider).

>>9294390

There has and never will be a bad reason for recommending the classics.

On the other hand, suggesting an archive of books on a failed political ideology is just setting someone up for failure.

Leftist recommendations might be good if you removed all the communist trash.

>>9294393
Basically in any History book about the Spanish Civil War. ¿No lo entiendes, puto retrasado ignorante?

No, Orwell was not a socialist. No, Orwell was not against """Stalinism""". No, the POUM (trotskyists) were not marxism. No, trotskyism is not marxism.

>>9294363
>All about foundation. I wouldn't recommend somebody to study a particular philosophy without understanding the philosophers that influenced that philosophy. But again, I didn't make those lists, I'm only saying they're better than Commie shit.

the new right took a lot from gramsci and bordiga. fascist theory was founded largely by disaffected anarchists.

u big girls blouse

>>9294401

That depends if there is significant backlash or not. Either result, backlash or consolidation and centralisation (and thus political disenfranchisement of the democratic citizenry) can be laid largely at the feet of New Labour, which, although enthusiastic for neoliberalism, has been one of the most radical forces Britain has ever seen.

I consider neoliberalism more left wing than right wing in the traditional sense desu, because I can't see how such a doctrine can be anything other than radical in its consequences--the difference is that this New Left doesn't care at all about the working class, so finds common ground with the Thatcherites and neocons.

Common ground needs to be found between social democrat types and more traditional conservatives, because they share a common enemy, and also some key principles (care for the environment and countryside, social welfare, national sovereignty, putting your own citizens first, and so on).

Let's realise that Thatcherites and Blairites are the enemies of both these groups.

>>9294413
>There has and never will be a bad reason for recommending the classics.
No, but it is suspect when the classics you recommend are totally incongruous with the rest of the subject matter and indeed the topic the list is supposed to address. It's like making a guide to Steven King and out of no where recommending the Qur'an. It just gives the impression that whoever made this hasn't read the Qur'an and indeed probably hasn't read much Steven King either.

>On the other hand, suggesting an archive of books on a failed political ideology is just setting someone up for failure.
If the explicit purpose of the list is to learn about that political ideology I don't know why you would insist it includes anything else. It's not like the list is supposed to be all you're over going to need to read in your life, just the essentials for getting a good understanding of that ideology.

>>9294415
See
>>9294385

>>9294415
> Orwell was not a socialist.
Yes he was.

>No, the POUM (trotskyists) were not marxism
Yes they were.

"POUM" literally stands for "Workers' Party of Marxist Unification" in Spanish.

>>9294424

> It's like making a guide to Steven King

Not at all. Stupid analogy.

Making a "Leftist reading" guide and flooding it with Communist political theory is like making a grilling cookbook that advertises "All The BBQ Favorites," and making every ingredient in every recipe shit.

>>9294430
>Not at all. Stupid analogy.
Flawless argument.

>Making a "Leftist reading" guide and flooding it with Communist political theory is like making a grilling cookbook that advertises "All The BBQ Favorites," and making every ingredient in every recipe shit.
Yes, making a leftist reading guide and including leftist political theory is simply unacceptable. Don't they know that leftist reading guides aren't supposed include leftist books?

>>9294428

Orwells opinions change massively throughout his life. Particularly after Catalonia and after what Stalin was doing began to be known. Any statement of Orwells politics is meaningless without this consideration and the knowledge of at what point in his life he was making any given statement.

>>9292096
The way you're using revolutionary here as an adjective, as if communism is particularly revolutionary, might be causing confusion. Capitalism is revolutionary and by no means stable. Revolution is the means actual qualitative development historically occurs.
The genesis and penetration of global capital is a revolution, the contradictions and limits of liberalism is the limits of the capitalist revolution.
I don't know, specifically, what you mean by the means of communist revolution or what that would even fully theoretically entail; 20th century statist "communism" just helped develop global capitalism by laying infrastructure to be later privatized and monetized and provided ideological legitimization for western democracy... it was a symbiotic relationship of development, there's no way that without the USSR there would have been an artificially lifted living standard by means of Keynesian welfare statism or the massive public investments in space technology, development of infrastructure for the internet, etc, etc which is the actual prerequisites for real global capital. The development of global interconnection would not have occurred without this symbiosis and this would have been a barrier to the development of capital. The limits to capitalist development is private property relations, capital must continuous attempt to destroy private property to maximize its full theoretic development.

>>9294441

Ah, here you misunderstand me. I was referring to revolution as specifically involving violent revolution.

>>9294440
He wrote this in 1947. Long after the Spanish Civil War.

>Orwells opinions change massively throughout his life
This is true, but what isn't is that he ever stopped being a socialist.

>>9294437

Why not call it "Communist Reading Guide," or "The Retards Reading Round-Up." It doesn't do Left leaning politics any favors to associate the whole spectrum to the dumbest idea man has ever come up with.

>>9294408
>global trend of migration

Idiot. So the New Labour government had no control over accepting completely unprecedented numbers of migrants? Are you kidding me? What other countries did is completely irrelevant to the question at hand, which is about the UK and New Labour--you are simply wrong, and that's why you're equivocating like such a dishonest piece of shit. You are busy denying reality and fact right now with this garbage ("muhh global trend, muhh, didn't escalate dramatically with New Labour"--this is false and at odds with the facts, which I posted already).

And intentions actually don't matter very much at all. Misplaced good intentions have always been the bane of humanity, and most of the horrors of history were caused by supposedly good intentions. Almost everyone rationalises their intentions as good, but the truth is that your own rationalising is often just a form of self-justification for deeper motivations. This was shown clearly by Hume, and is supported by modern scientific understanding of the brain (pre-frontal cortex is wholly dependent on other parts of the brain to function).

Anyway, it doesn't matter: it was a radical and transformative policy with disastrous long term consequences; whether it was caused by incompetence or cynicism is irrelevant to me (but apparently a point of faith with you); I personally find cynicism the more believable option, because such incredible incompetence (like not knowing you are pursuing a policy that is obviously transformative and radical when everyone with a brain can see that you are) is almost inconceivable. It is really so obvious, and a plain fact of history that mass migratory changes transform the nature of a society (Christ, what is Northern Ireland for $100?).

>>9294446
>This is true, but what isn't is that he ever stopped being a socialist.

http://exiledonline.com/big-brothers-george-orwell-and-christopher-hitchens-exposed/

>>9294448
Because it's not exclusively communist. It also includes anarchist works, non-political Marxist works and certain works of fiction.

> It doesn't do Left leaning politics any favors to associate the whole spectrum to the dumbest idea man has ever come up with.
I love how you need to remind us that you hate communism in every sentence yet have given up on defending every other point.

>>9294440
You can dislike Stalinists and still be a lefty you know

>>9294442
>>9294441

To continue, I do believe in a movement away from our current unabated free market system certainly. It is working for nobody and regulation is required. I just don't believe in the use of vioent revolutionary means to do so. The centralisation of power in revolutionary governments is something that cannot be trusted and moreover long term can only produce oppression.

>>9294446
His opinions on implementation and so forth did change however.

>>9294442
History isn't particularly moral and if you know anything about history you'll know violent revolution is the primitive means by which all changes tended to happen. Communism doesn't require violent revolution any more than capitalism requires violent revolution. Capitalist revolution is actually occurring all that needs to be understood is what is the consequences and long run trajectory of continuous capitalist development.

>>9294452
I'm not reading these hot opinions, breh.

Make an argument or quit it.

>>9294451
Hasen't the largest wave of migration come under the current conservative party?

>>9294461
>His opinions on implementation and so forth did change however.
True.

But he was still a socialist.

This is the only pill y'all will ever need.

>>9294466

I agree, however a proposed communist revolution can't obey the same rules. It is not searching for a simple regime change, it is seeking to entirely and permanently upend society. It can almost be considered a rebellion against the very idea of political power as it has existed in the western world up until this point. As such I do not believe the violent means to be useful in accomplishing this goal, as they require the establishment of a repressive and violent state to consolidate the ideals of revolution, and such states never transition away from total power, total power which adapts and is at the mercy of a small number of people, by its very nature changeable and unsustainable.

I agree with you that other kinds of revolution are definitely necessary, but I am fundamentally opposed to the use of violence with regard to communism.

>>9294474
Wasn't disputing this.

>>9294485
>Wasn't disputing this.
You mustn't be the original guy because that was the source of the argument.
>>9294415

>>9294492
Yeah I wasn't original guy, I just got caught up somewhere along the line

>>9294472

Well he did say that they have adopted the doctrine of the Blairites

>>9284720
Why Freud?

>>9294454

>"I-it's not just communist"

Anarchism isn't inherently left-wing. Why aren't there any GOOD works that don't make it come off like you're 16 and impressionable.
>given up on defending every other point.

What points have I given up on? The only thing I said is that your favorite boogieman reads better books than you and supported it with evidence. You conceded at the beginning by not having been able to provide a single response of substance.

>>9294451
>What other countries did is completely irrelevant to the question at hand

Not really, we're talking about some sinister plot to undermine western civilisation and blair's wish to do so. Placing things in context is pretty useful.

>And intentions actually don't matter very much at all

Ok then don't talk about intentions to destroy national sovereignty then? I agree a level of consequentialism is needed.

>Anyway, it doesn't matter: it was a radical and transformative policy with disastrous long term consequences

We'll see, I doubt the nation state of england is going to collapse anytime soon.

You're still banging on with the speculative nonsense I see.

>>9294505
>and supported it with evidence

Not really, you haven't posted a single good chart yet, nor any evidence they've actually been read (I'm sure most of /leftypol/ or whatever you want to term them don't really read their charts as well in fairness)

But it's a stupid argument. You're moaning about a chart specifically aimed to select knowingly leftist works. /lit/ has made right-wing reading charts, classic reading charts and so on too.

And plenty of other random shit to boot. Should this list (pic related) have muslim works?

Platonov is interesting

>>9294524

>Not really, you haven't posted a single good chart yet

That's your opinion and anyone of good sense and judgement can see for themselves that a list with Socrates, Plato, and Hobbes is better than a bunch of "lol I'm so punk" commie/anarchist trash.

Once again though, since clearly you're beyond stupid, suggesting nearly 100% communist reading for "left political theory" is both disingenuous and Fucking lame. Call it what it is, trash.

>>9294505
>Anarchism isn't inherently left-wing.
Oh, but it is.
>Why aren't there any GOOD works that don't make it come off like you're 16 and impressionable.
Well that's because you're entirely animated by ideology and wince in disgust at books from "the enemy team". With that said I would very much enjoy seeing you recommend some leftist literature to see what you would consider not bad. Given that you don't seem to like even the non-communist books there.

>The only thing I said is that your favorite boogieman reads better books than you and supported it with evidence. You conceded at the beginning by not having been able to provide a single response of substance.
Ah, this tactic. The one were you forget the entire previous exchange happened and say some fiction happened in its place. I love this tactic. Also, I shouldn't need to remind you that I'm not a communist or even a leftist.

And to answer your question these are the points you gave up on.
1. You've entirely given up on presenting yourself as well-read and being at work making it impossible to post your own bookshelves. And I'm starting to doubt you're at work either given you've been shitposting here for over two hours now.
2. You've given up on defending the charts you posted as being good.
3. You've given up on deriding the original chart as being bad.
4. You've given up on explaining what was wrong with the Steven King-Qur'an analogy.

Wait a second. That's just about every point. At this the conversation has virtually degenerated to you sticking your fingers in your ears and insisting that every book with any connection to communism is is irredeemable.

>>9294535
>That's your opinion and anyone of good sense and judgement can see for themselves that a list with Socrates, Plato, and Hobbes is better than a bunch of "lol I'm so punk" commie/anarchist trash.
>It's good because it has classics in it.

Thanks for proving that you're an easily dazzled pleb.

>>9294536

In what way is anarchism inherently left wing? How exactly can anarchism do anything but allow for the establishment of even more inequality?

>>9294536
Stopped reading here
>Oh, but it is.

Try not being wrong within 4 words and I'll warrant you more attention

>>9294544
Because anarchism demands the total dismantlement of hierarchy. Most importantly in this case private property. Given it wants rid of that you would be hard pressed to justify it as anything but left wing.

> How exactly can anarchism do anything but allow for the establishment of even more inequality?
Read the anarchist section of that chart and find out.

I'm not an anarchist so I'm not going to get involved with explaining why anarchism might work. If I knew and was convinced by those arguments I wouldn't be a non-anarchist.

>>9294485
>It is not searching for a simple regime change, it is seeking to entirely and permanently upend society.

If you don't think this is naturally developing within like the next 50 years just lol; forces have already been set in motion that will destroy everything you know, the question is how society will be able to adapt to the full development of AI, automation, population movements from climatic changes, etc, etc which won't stop any time soon, we're approaching a critical point in world history

>>9294554

>>9294567

t, didn't read the rest of my comment

>>9294535

anon i'm a different poster, first time i had replied to you just got tired of you spewing nonsense

a badly put together list is a badly put together list end of, including the likes of hobbes alongside frank herbet makes absolutely no sense

most left political theory is generally communist or socialist - this being said, you can't really classify foucault, derrida and a few others on that list, not to mention the anarchist section and the well known disputes between bakunin and marx

if you have better suggestions for leftist thinkers, then go ahead, but it's pretty clear that you're only rejecting it because of ideological opposition

also, 'leftist' does generally mean 'far-left', you might argue that you could include rawls on a left-leaning chart, but rawls is certainly not one to include on a 'leftist' chart

like hobbes wouldn't be on a specifically far-right chart

The one thing that defines the socialist is the incredible amount of envy that they possess. First, there is the fact that so many people refuse to accept the reality that those who accumulate wealth in a capitalist society do so simply by pleasing large numbers of their fellow citizens with the products or services that they sell. In terms of making money, the movie star outstrips the philosopher. This often creates a lifelong feeling of envy and hatred towards capitalism and capitalists in the mind of the "philosopher." Many people also insist that they should be judged by some kind of absolute standard (defined by the government, of course) as opposed to the dollar "votes" of their fellow citizens. Consequently, they are frustrated and envious of the more successful among them. The less successful (including the lazy or incompetent) often express hate and enmity against all those who superseded them. Political demagogues take advantage of such people by promising them something for nothing ("free" healthcare! "free" education! "free" you name it!) in the name of egalitarianism.

Why don't you guys just stop coveting thy neighbor?

>>9294541

The irony in your retardation is you read Communist trash which is all about "power to the plebs" and that's why you like it. You study an ideology of failure and it speaks volumes about your "education" and "colleagues"

>>9294580
As I've told you multiple times throughout this thread I'm not a communist.

>>9294573
the reality is those who accumulate wealth in a capitalist society so simply by inheritance

>>9294572

Sure thing samefag sorry I shit on your bad list of terrible books and it offended you, call me up when they manage one country that isn't a catastrophic failure.

I thought leftists to be genuinely better, maybe you'd at least start with Locke, but no, you aren't.

>>9294606

Why should a man work for another man's wives sons well being? What cuckolded is this?

Property is a fundamental human right any decent person can agree on.

>>9294613

i'm not a communist anon, i've read bits of burke, locke and hume,

communism is an abject failure and won't work

you're still very stupid and your lists are terrible, compared to a decently put together list that you only dislike because of your politics

this is not to say /pol/ can't make good lists, but you haven't shown any and haven't given a well thought out critique of the leftist list

>>9294624
when your neighbours are doing well, you in turn do better. why should people get more than others for being born?

property is theft

>>9294640

Sure, you can reason that property is theft.
However you can't create a propertyless situation without violent coercion, lest someone just use violence and re-establish their right to property by the gun.

The other situation is where the government enforces the no private property rule. This requires overwhelming force on the part of the government, forever. At some point this will turn against the people, it is a simple inevitability.

>>9294630

The lists were fine you are just perturbed and being ridiculous because /pol/ recommended Dune. Why you're so massively butthurt about it to tears is beyond me, makes you seem you want to defend your list of bad literature.

>b-but you didn't say it well enough for me

Okay anon, if someone were going to study to be a doctor I wouldn't suggest them books on homeopathic incense remedies. That's essentially communism in the political spectrum, and selling it to people as "political left essentials" discredits that whole end of the spectrum outright. I wouldn't do that knowing there are decent leftists in the world smarter than to repeat mankind's greatest failures.

>>9294640

>build house
>retarded faggot communist says half belongs to him
>you tell him no
>"property is theft"

>>9294653
you mean as opposed to the government taking away the commons and enforcing private property laws forever, in the process crushing all peasant and farmer rebellions in the name of decent human rights...

sure property rights sure was an inevitable naturally occurring phenomenon

>>9294663
>dad bequeaths money
>"I work hard for my living"

>>9294665

>property rights sure was an inevitable naturally occurring phenomenon

Considering it's a concept which existed in every society ever including communist ones yeah I'd say it is. The delicious irony being that nobody suffered more than the common man under communism. The governments stole the farmers food and starved them.

>>9294665

I do not mean that. I am merely stating that you need a better model for anarchism lest it fails.

Why in these arguments am I always accused of supporting the status quo for pointing out that none of these systems are sustainable and the end results may even contradict the core values of the system? What we need here is complex theories to build governmental systems around stemming from the idealogy, not simple maxims like "property is theft."

>>9294669

Good thing those people still have to spend money and thus fuel the economy and hopefully you. I know communists are just shy of mentally disabled but you don't stay rich with all expense, no income

>>9294657
It's not my list and I disagree with most of the works on it, at least the ones I've read. As stated I am not a communist. It is better to read the likes of plato, hobbes and rawls in my view.

There is no butthurt here, I'm just calling you stupid because you've posted stupid things and haven't posted a coherent argument. Criticising a leftist reading list for containing decidedly leftist works in incoherent.

The lists you provided were also incoherent so I assume there's a theme here. Criticising things purely down to your own biases is dumb. Dune is pretty shit that's why I will criticise it, as long as there being no sense to post it along with the other selection. Lit already has far better conservative charts.

>>9294674
>doesn't understand what a commons is.
>thinks property existed in every human society

>>9284544
He was a radical socialist very sympathetic to Marxism

The message of Animal Farm is that the farm has regressed from its revolutionary glory. Napoleon is now just as evil as the men had been.

>>9294686
yeah, inheritance fuels the economy! weeeeeeee

>>9294694

>being so butthurt about getting your retarded ideology criticized that the only words you can muster are "ur dumb"

This discussion is really going places

>>9284567
Trotskyism was the hip thing for radical lefties who wanted socialism but not in the Soviet system, informed by a mix of real problems with the USSR and bourgeois propaganda. Then the hip thing was Maoism.

>>9291948
The wealthiest 8 men have as much wealth as half the human population

>>9287449
90% of communists are third world proles

>>9294700

Tell me about them

>>9294725

Bullshit. Most communists are white, middle class brats who never worked for anything. Most third worlders learned how shitty communism is first hand.

>>9294739
a commoner used common land, you know, land held in common, to farm and graze because surprise! when your population decreases from disease, turns out you need to band together in order to survive. yes, even rich people need other people to help them feed themselves. then property rights came along and fenced off said land, killing resistance and letting to rest starve, for manorial gardens and whatnot.

did you skip high school history?

>>9294472

I already stated that the Cameron Conservative Party adopted Blairite policy, and is now the means of its continuation. That's partly why Labou ended up with Corbyn, and also why the Blairites in his party despise him so much, and have 100x more in common with Cameron than they do with him. Blairites from both parties need to form their own party already so that we can have a genuine alternative to them and their incessant empty rhetoric and love of PR. They've made politics more vapid than its ever been: all I hear come out the mouths of politicians these days are idiotic and meaningless soundbites, and that even includes figures who are supposedly on the outside like Farage, who isn't much different from the rest, except on one (or two) issues (and even such slight deviation from political orthodoxy has him being portrayed as the devil incarnate).

>>9290164
>>9290299
actual retards who think that a dominant ideology present in mainstream media is the same thing as censorship.
you claim these people are controlling all media but they're just controlling media they create.
it just so happens a lot of media consuming Americans are on board with not being edgy racists and want to consume this media.
if you have a problem with this you're the one against freedom of speech and you just can't come to terms with the fact a lot of people disagree with you.
if everyone actually was an idiot who gets their info from badly made graphics on /pol/ and Alex Jones videos then nothing would be stopping them and nothing's stopping you right now from doing those things.
"""sjws""" only have as much of an effect on your life as you allow them to. you just want to be a victim because it upsets you that there's a black person in your terrible tv show you used to like.

>>9284593
Skip to 1000 plateaus, it's the fun one.

>>9294761

God damn you are stupid. Not even the same anon and wow, I'm just flabbergasted by how ridiculously dumb you are. What SOCIETIES you worthless clod.

>>9294772

Too bad being racist means literally nothing since any disagreement with leftist policies is racist.

Don't want to flood your country with a billion third world Arab nazis? Racist.

>>9294775
Europe, North America, South-East Asia, +siberia +lapland all held land in common. Some societies never gave it up (Native Americans) etc. it's like, not that hard.

>>9294510

No one has mentioned "a sinister plot to undermine western civilisation" except you buddy. I simply said that Labour realised that this was a good way to win elections and prevent rural England from being able to elect an actually conservative party ever again. It is called naked self-interest, and your turning that into "some sinister plot to undermine western civilisation" is your own idiotic strawman.

England isn't a nation-state either. Don't you know anything? And in terms of its finances, the UK Government is already pretty close to collapse--unsustainable pension and education systems, unsustainable entitlements, mass migration to combat demographic problems, social unrest as a result, increased polarization (completely needless and could never have happened without these policies), dependence on finance, a nation filled with low-wage service sector workers, and on and on and on.

If you don't think these are disastrous consequences then you're a fool. The decisions made by the Blairites have put this country in a gigantic hole from which it will be a brutal slog to escape. We have completely disenfranchised our youth by pursuing selfish and self-indulgent social policies, so that we can keep handing out the goodies (and bringing in the votes), while effectively robbing the future of their wealth to pay for our present indulgences. It is despicable, and it started before Blair, but what New Labour did was make all these problems 10x worse than they would've been otherwise.

>>9294798

Those are continents, not civilizations, all of the societies within them had concepts of property.

In Native American societies, like the Mayans, the rulers all had property while plebs lived in common houses. You're still wrong.

>>9294798
>>9294813

Also,
>Don't know much about southeast asian history
>Look up Khmer Empire property rights
>People had property

Guess you're shooting for 0 then. Pretty typical of a communist.

>>9294640
Because the family and not the individual is the fundamental unit of social organisation. The individual, not born into some kind of protective of family structure, is nothing but a corpse. Keep up the doctrine of anti-reality if you like, but you'd do better to acknowledge the realities of human nature, rather than pretending one can create a magical rationalistic utopia--good luck with that one!

Are there any good pro-choice books?

I'm not interested if they focus on bodily rights or deny that the unborn is biologically human.

>>9294840
Not that it actually matters, but I'm working on a short story that ends up pro-life-leaning but with heavy empathy for pro-choicers.

>>9294957

I'll be interested in checking it out. I'm pro-life myself I'm just looking for the best of other side because the arguments that I'm getting from here and other forums are very weak.

>>9294640
>>9294761
>>9294798

People who've think thought this were are all useless dead weight who society would benefit from putting out to pasture; think about it, nobody who's ever stayed at a commune or thought it was great was EVER a worthwhile human being. While on the other hand there isn't and has never been a single helpful, intelligent, contributing member of humanity who thinks they should resign to charity everything they've ever worked for and built. Everyone who ever asked that sacrifice from humanity has labored for and contributed nothing. Really makes you think communists are the dumbest most useless people on earth and they should go back to cripplechan and reddit where people get banned for challenging their idiot worldviews

>>9294452
>Orwell ratted out Claud Cockburn
>Hitchens stabbed Alex Cockburn in the back
It's like poetry.

>>9294986
I'm far from finished, but my execution of the story would be too minimalist for me to summarize here. So I'll just tell you how the abortion or the story was inspired, and hopefully rhat could give you a little more empathy too.

Anyway, I worked with a woman who was going through the deal of making rhe choice. I could tell she was torn up about it. Notice "making" in "making a choice." It isn't passive, sure, but it's certainly a contemplation.

Her reasoning was that they already had enough kids to feed, she and her husband, and they were both working. Adoption wouldn't be possible because she couldn't afford to miss work on maternity leave. There were several other reasons I don't feel like mentioning, but that's the gist.

Anyhow, seeing the look on her face as she finally told me, and she told me because she trusted me, I immediately felt all this guilt come down on me for being so... westboro baptist? about it.

But it's the difficulty in making that choice, then having to live with the guilt and regret of having done it at all. And just because they regret it, that doesn't mean it wasn't the right choice in the end.

>>9294669
>thinks something is wrong with parents working hard to improve the lives of

such a derp: if everyone took your dumb-as-bricks position on this no person would have made sacrifices for posterity, and there'd be no such things as civilisation, just a bunch of barbarian tribespeople living in the utmost squalor.

>>9294719

Production follows a Pareto distribution so why should that surprise you?

>>9294761

What is this shit? Farms could never have come into being without the concept of property--stop being such a communist chode and inventing imaginary histories of humanity. One cannot farm land without first fencing it off (i.e. designating an area to farm)--the latter is obviously antecedent to the former.

>>9294772

False. SJWs, because they have nothing better to do, incessantly lobby to shut out and no platform (and if that fails, shout down) opinions which contradict their own insanity. Everyone is fed up with their bullshit already, and don't want these pampered brats dictating to them what can and cannot be said. And yes, with media power as centralised as it is (6 conglomerates owning 90% of the media), and intent on distributing propaganda, ignoring actual news (burying stories, etc.), and using instruments of power to shut down dissent, then yes, that is obviously censorship.