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/lit/ - Literature

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17242569 No.17242569[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Will reading theory turn me into a leftist? Is it worth it?

>> No.17242948

>>17242569
>Will reading theory turn me into a leftist?
Probably
>Is it worth it?
Eh

>> No.17242982

Avoided leftist theory like the plague for some time (paranoid of them ebil frankfurt school or some shit), got into it after reading essays by Padraig Pearse. Its a rabbit hole but a good rabbit hole, got me to actually read things

>> No.17243054

>Read theory
Why is it that commies first decide they are commies and then work backwards to justify their insane worldview?

>> No.17243061

I haven't been that impressed by the theory I've read so far even if the subjects always sound interesting.

>> No.17243072

>>17242569
No, you can read those things and disagree with everything.

>> No.17243073

Went from a neocon to a commie, most times prob because they think it means free shit. Haven't met one that went beyond the manifesto.

>> No.17243079

>>17242569
>Whitehead
>Nietzsche
>Kant
Uhhh what?

>> No.17243090

>>17242569
The same stands for everything else I'm immersed on society or on 4chan or wherever else. While it does affect me in some regards it doesn't prevent me from disagreeing with things or avoiding them altogether.

>> No.17243107

>>17243054
I think it's because most commies (in the West at least), are motivated by hatred for the status quo under capitalism more than anything else.

>> No.17243250

>>17243054
It happens the other way round. You begin to notice contradictions in liberal capitalist doctrine, you attain class consciousness, and you begin to dig in further at the roots. Theory is a process of negativity by which the unuttered structures of power are critiqued, revealing what is absent from our world. Communism is reached slowly, empirically; one cannot rush and claim what communism is or how it must come about, otherwise it just becomes utopian or totalitarian, which is directly opposed to the scientific and anti-state program of Marx and Engels. Communism is a spectre, and as such you must obliquely shine light near it to gradually reveal it.

>> No.17244759

>>17243054
They have a desire to not work.

>> No.17244772

>>17242569
>the birth of tragedy is on the list
objectively Nietzsche's worst book what a total drag

>> No.17244994

>>17242569
I'm fairly certain the majority of people who identify as leftists haven't read any of those books.

>> No.17245031

>>17243079
Also Marcel Mauss. Did they stop at the title and think it was an endorsement of gift-economies?

>> No.17245069

>>17242569
For me the exact opposite was true with my views originally being “liberal”, the more I read the more I became an elitist and authoritarian cynic. just come to understand if you read exclusively or hold bias to either left or right literature then you’ll be reading in circles and won’t truly grasp any of the material, just what you want to hear. That being said a firm grasp on history, philosophy and good fiction will no doubt put you on the same plane, aka “most of the people around me are just aloof dogs” left wing, right wing or centre isle.

>> No.17245080

>>17243073
Like a reverse Irving Kristol?

>> No.17245110

>>17243250
Is this Derrida’s position?

>> No.17245138

>>17242569
>If I gain knowledge will my views change?
Probably, but what does that matter, you will have the knowledge to back up those views for a change regardless if you end up a leftist or just remain a less ignorant version of what ever the fuck you are now.

>> No.17245141

you might find that leftist theory is more rooted in material reality and has more reasonable criticisms beyond just "muh race muh nation muh nostalgic romanticism" of fascism

>> No.17245161

>>17245141
If that were the case why did you just reduce everyone else to a stereotype of the alt/far right?

You make a terrible case for your views.

>> No.17245177

Read about reality. Theory is irrelevant.

>> No.17245217

>>17242569
if you are going to read political theory books dont just read communist ones. Some of the books on your chart are not really left leaning so thats a good start but one I would recommend that isnt on that list is agorist (basically libertarian) class theory by some wally dude and SEK3. its only like 30 pages and is a pretty direct criticism of communism from a libertarian point of view so it is a very good read imo.
http://agorism.info/docs/AgoristClassTheory.pdf

>> No.17245565

>>17242569
It probably won't unless you're kinda retarded and easily influenced to begin with. Some of it is actually fairly interesting but a lot of it is word salad from ivory tower academics that live in a reality that's utterly abstact and divorced from the average person. Although I can say the same of right-wing thinkers like Julius Evola, he at least never pretended like he was trying to appeal to the common man.

>> No.17245617

It won't inherently turn you in any direction.

>> No.17245784

>>17242569
it'll turn you into a permanent virgin, that's for sure

>> No.17246756

>>17242569
maybe, but it's probably not worth it. it will be a major waste of time unless you really enjoy political theory, and even then, you will be annoyed by how online leftist circles have such a hard time thoughtfully engaging with and incorporating the literature into their lives

>> No.17246821

>>17243250
writing pseud books only read by other pseuds is just a cope. when nobody involved is taking any tangible political action and its just endless discourse then youve achieved nothing but the construction of an elaborate group fiction

>> No.17246861

>>17245110
Nah, it’s standard Western Marxism, Adorno et al

>>17246821
Activism, unionization, protest, and political strides can happen alongside critique, they are not at all mutually exclusive. But if you think enormous structural economic changes can come about solely through action, you are woefully misinformed about the nature of global empire and the ubiquity of capitalism’s institutions of capture and control

>> No.17246873

>>17242569
Roll. If I get >84 just reread Iliad.

>> No.17246926

>>17246873
>Le Deuxième Sexe
Oh well, could be worse. Existentialist parts could be interesting and second-wave feminism is at least tolerable unlike absolutely degenerate third-wave.

>> No.17246961

>>17243250
>empirical
>scientific
>anti-state
In practice all it does is justify revolutionary violence. If it was any of these things, or if it emerged from a reasonable understanding of material reality as >>17245141 says, we would have seen something completely different... but what we see is a doubling down on old certainties and old interpretations. The same mistake of depending on an all powerful state bureaucracy as a stepping stone to an imagined situation without any state, class, exploitation, etc. There is nothing magical about revolution that extinguishes everything bad. Far better to follow an evolutionary path, such as Georgism, that constantly makes things better for workers without fundamentally disrupting material prosperity and progress or taking the massive risks involved in revolutionary behaviour and the sort of brittle, vengeful, aggressive, oppressive post-revolutionary governance that almost inevitably results.

>> No.17247077

>>17242569
A lot of that shit isn't leftist though. Hegel definitely wasn't, neither was Nietzsche or Whitehead. Leftists have a bad habit of misinterpreting philosophers and trying to appropriate works in ways that the original author would strongly disagree with. Some left wing dumbasses said their TV show was based on Derrida and Derrida flat out said that deconstructionism doesn't work within that context.

https://youtu.be/TNOXuurUODE

>> No.17247087

>>17247077
>stop watching sitcom, go do your homework and read
sounds like my parents

>> No.17247137

>>17245161
>reduce everyone else to a stereotype of the alt/far right
Not everyone else, but just the alt-right, who are enough of a caricature themselves

>> No.17247140

>>17243061
Theory is full of posturing. I’m about halfway through The Burnout Society, and it’s pretty disappointing. For every good insight there’s at least ten examples of overly broad generalizations and and grand pronouncements that don’t amount to much, and it features a first chapter that has aged so poorly that it’s laughable. If it weren’t as short as it is, I wouldn’t bother finishing it.

>> No.17247164

>>17247077
>Some left wing dumbasses said their TV show was based on Derrida
I don’t think the creators of Seinfeld ever claimed such a thing, but it should be clear to anyone that it has some reconstructive elements, even if they weren’t inspired by Derrida. What’s really pathetic is seeing one of France’s celebrity philosophers pretending his work is too revolutionary for parts of it to be incorporated into sitcoms.

>> No.17247350

>>17245141
Anything that still grasps onto psychoanalysis and structural linguistics, and semiotics can’t claim to be rooted in any sort of reality.

>> No.17247353

>>17243054
They are socialised into communism by friends/associates first.

>> No.17247381

>>17246961
Reformism will always get absorbed back into capitalism. Capitalism cannot be reformed, it is a fundamentally inadequate system of economics that is bound to collapse. Revolution is not magical but necessary. The only magical thinking here is your notion that we can have our cake and eat it too, that we can make things better for workers “without fundamentally disrupting material prosperity” (presumably you mean for capitalist societies and the capitalist classes that benefit from them). If evolutionism worked it would have triumphed long ago. Instead we got neoliberalism where the capitalist class rolled all reforms back practically to where they were in the gilded age. Just because the third world revolutions, which occurred in countries with limited economies and productive capabilities, ended poorly doesn’t mean revolution is forever doomed. It has to happen in countries where the modes of production have been perfected, just as Marx said. And they need to be organized in a way that is democratic unlike the bureaucratic statisms we saw in the 20th.

>> No.17247418

>>17247381
tl;dr it will never happen

>> No.17247431
File: 110 KB, 860x572, BBACFED4-5A57-4DB0-91F7-A12E7C71D586.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17247431

>>17247418

>> No.17247442

>>17246821
Contributing to an episteme helps by making more people conscious of the contradictions of whatever political system or moral system you are critical of.
Basically if you write a book about a topic, you allow more people to become aware of whatever issues you write about. Doesn’t necessarily have to Marxist or whatever ideology, you can critique capitalism without being a commie.

>> No.17247458

>>17247418
It's just a religion for armchair dipshit intellectuals who love to pretend that they figured out how society works.

>> No.17247478

i'm a realist and a pragmatist and that's why i know that communism doesn't work oops 373k people died completely preventable deaths, the economy is in the toilet, and my infallible western capitalist democracy is crashing around my ears. oh well

>> No.17247539

>>17242982
You will never be a woman

>> No.17247553

>>17247431
Yep, this means everything will play out exactly like Marx said
#TrustThePlan #Q... Wait, no #M

>> No.17247579

>>17247553
Kek.
These people are actually worse than QBoomers, what a joke.