/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4227648]

There's a lot on Marxism. But I want to start somewhere. What are five or six books that will help me to UNDERSTAND Marxism as an ideology/its key components?

[Anonymous No.4227653]

All you really need to understand Marxism is the Communist Manifesto and The Ego and It's Own.

[Anonymous No.4227675]

>>4227648
Harry Cleaver, "Introdution" _Reading Capital Politically_ Libcom.org
Marx, _Wages Price and Profit_ marxists.org
Marx, _Critique of Gotha Programme_ ; _Theses on Feuerbach_ ; _Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy_ (pamphlets)
Engels, _German Peasants War_ ; _Family, Private Property and the State_ ; _Condition of the English Working Class in 1844_ ; Marx, _18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_
Kolakowski, _Main Currents of Marxism_

[Anonymous No.4227677]

>>4227675
Introduction obviously, typos. Marx and Engels are on Marxists.org. You're going to have to steal Kolakowski.

>>4227653
Manifesto a shit.

[Anonymous No.4227765]

>>4227648
OP to give more targeted advice what is your experience with history and 19th century philosophy?

[Anonymous No.4227857]

>>4227675
>libcom
Lib means Liberal, right? Because that what Libertarian Communism is.

DONT TRUST THE LEFT COMS.

[Anonymous No.4227889]

>>4227765
Not much, to be honest. I've only read very little here and there on Marxism, but nothing that really helps me get a sense of how Marx thought it could work, how it was implemented through different people, and where it stands now.

[Anonymous No.4227919]

>>4227857
Libertarian communists have been more in touch with praxis than you statist II/III "international"ists have been.

[Anonymous No.4227951]

>>4227919
>praxis
>blac block
>lifestyleism
>squatting
>running tourist attractions such as Christiania
>charity
>punk culture

Without theory you wouldn't understand how ALL of these are counterproductive for communism.

Read some books, become a Marxist.

[Anonymous No.4227966]

>>4227951
>Read some books, become a Marxist.
>Become a Marxist
what if I have, and found only contradiction and nonsense? I mean
>capitalist class
Marx had no idea what he was talking about

[Anonymous No.4227988]

>>4227966

[Anonymous No.4227995]

>>4227988

[Anonymous No.4228000]

>>4227951
I am a Marxist mate.
>Praxis
This is the core of new socialist man. If you don't get that then you're a substitutionalist.
>blac block
A sometimes useful tactic, see "The Mobility." For its failure see "Peterloo." OH WAIT THAT'S 220 YEARS OF PRAXIS.
>lifestylism
is fucking useless
>squatting
tactics. See, amongst the substitutionalists, the Weimar CP's actions in Berlin.
>running tourist attractions such as Christiania
Service work [often] has a low OCC, so when fragments of post-capitalist production need to be exchanged outwards Christiania has a low level of productivity.
>charity
Is a system of bourgeois violence.
>punk culture
Yeah, go read the Birmingham studies. Sub-cultures aren't particularly revolutionary or counter-revolutionary.

You're pretty fucked mate if you don't believe that the emancipation of the working is the task of that class itself.

[Anonymous No.4228031]

>>4227648

Value, Price and Profit (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm))

This will give you a basic introduction to the economic ideas that are illuminated in such rich detail in Capital.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm))

This will give you an introduction into the philosophical side of (scientific) socialism. It is an extraction from a longer work by Engels (Anti-Dühring).


After these, read the the Manifesto (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm)) for the general concept of the political program that developed from these ideas -- just ignore the fact that it was written at an earlier date. You don't really need to read it, but it couldn't hurt.

-

The above was all first-grade stuff. If you want the "real dope," read the two longer texts already mentioned.

Capital (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm))

Anti-Dühring (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm))

If you still care after all that:

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm))

The Holy Family (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/index.htm))

-

Other people will suggest different orders and lists, but whatever.

[Anonymous No.4228059]

>>4228031
>Other people will suggest different orders and lists, but whatever.
We really ought to do a fucking flow chart eh?

[Anonymous No.4228076]

>>4227648
I've read a little bit of Marx himself (1844 Manuscripts, a decent portion of the German Ideology, Wage Labor and Capital, and am planning on having a go at Das Kapital soon) but want to know: what are some good Marxist schools of thought after Marx that are worth looking into, and where should I start with them? As in, where should I start with Leninism, or with the Frankfurt School, and what the hell do "Orthodox Marxism" and "Western Marxism" mean, and so on? And what works by M&E are good prerequisites for these guys?

And as for Marx & Engels themselves: is the Grundrisse worth reading? I'd just pick it up and see for myself, but it looks long as fuck.

[Anonymous No.4228080]

>>4228059
YES. Someone, please.

[Anonymous No.4228083]

>>4228076
Orthodox Marxism = Pre-Revisionism, ie Engels
Revisionism = 2nd Internationale Mainline, 2.5 Internationale
Post-Revisionism = Luxembourgists, Left-Communism, Leninism
Western Marxism = Left Communism, Council Communism, Frankfurt
Leninism = Leninism, Trotskyism, Internaional Right Oppositionism, Stalinism, Maoism, Titoism, Post-Trotskyism
Autonomism = Workerism (Italian), Post-Stalinist Left Communism

Just pick up Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism (3 vols) and read the chapter titles and intro paragraphs.

[Anonymous No.4228091]

ITT History's losers argue about the best way to finger their ass while spouting their infantile ideology

[Anonymous No.4228095]

>>4228083
Thanks.

>>4228091
Cool story, bro. Tell it again.

[Anonymous No.4228145]

>>4228080
Soliciting reading lists

[Anonymous No.4228163]

>>4228091

>losers

Look around, bruh. Capitalism is fucked.

[Anonymous No.4228180]

>>4228163
>Capitalism is fucked.
not for the winners

[Anonymous No.4228187]

>>4228145
>Never pay Verso a dime
W-why not? I like them. They publish good stuff and in nice editions.

[Anonymous No.4228189]

>>4228180
Who are your winners? An extremely small portion of the population?

[Anonymous No.4228205]

>>4228180

Considering the inevitable crises of capitalism -- overproduction, the death of money, and war -- there are only temporary 'winners' (by which description, I assume you mean the expropriators of surplus value, the capitalist class). In the last analysis, socialism is better for your children, bourgeois.

[Anonymous No.4228207]

>>4228187
>W-why not? I like them. They publish good stuff and in nice editions.
Because they expand the value form by selling marxism. Almost every left com publication of the last 50 years is available by photocopy from Cleaver, or through Libcom. Almost every "scholarly" marxist text from the last 50 years you need to pay Verso.

Verso are scum. Steal their books. Pirate PDFs. Don't pay them.

[Anonymous No.4228214]

>>4228207
Thanks for the heads up.

[Anonymous No.4228252]

1st book of Capital is the main thing, but it's a pain in the ass, and it's probably best to go through some introductions to it.
The first chapter, and maybe the second and third are the most important.
Of course, all of this is mostly focused on an analysis of capitalist society and developments in it, not theorising about communism, which Marx never seemed particulary interested in.

Cleavers Reading capital (also prefaces) is quite good if you want an introduction to autonomism, though not great for Capital itself.

https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/357k/357krcp.html
also study guide for the other chapters
https://webspace.utexas.edu/hcleaver/www/357k/357ksg.html


There's David Harveys free lecture course if you're into such stuff
http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

Personally i like the german neue marx-lektüre approach, and I think Michael Heinrichs introduction is probably the best in english
right now, whatever it's problems.
http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2884/
Can also be downloaded if you look around for it.

Here's an essay on the different traditions of reading Marx.
http://viewpointmag.com/2013/10/21/between-marx-marxism-and-marxisms-ways-of-reading-marxs-theory/

This capital-in-slides thing is supposed to be good as an intrduction also, though haven't checked it out too much myself yet.
http://www.polyluxmarx.de/en/home.html

[Anonymous No.4228257]

Oh and Kolakowski was an anti-marxist. And his book from 1976. So yeah, read it in case you want to impress anti-marxist friends with
outdated digs at stalinism, or enjoy totally unbiased chapters and classifications like: "György Lukács: reason in the service of dogma", and "Herbert Marcuse: marxism as a totalitarian utopia of the new left."

Seriously, you seem like you know what you're talking about. Why do you keep recommending him?

[Anonymous No.4228283]

>>4228257
Kolakowski clearly separates exegesis of the thinker's role in the history of ideas of Marxism from his judgements on them. And Lukacs _was_ reason in the service of dogma. Lukacs' attitude to the party was "partyminded" in the extreme with the exception of actual revolutions (1919, 1956) when his balls grew four hundred times in a single night. Lukacs' daughter was involved in the Student's Party in 1956 (a genuinely _communist_ party, outside of the Nagy controlled faction that Lukacs was a part of). Lukacs' thought is dogmatic in the extreme, and he may be the only Stalinist worth reading prior to Zizek.

Kolakowski offers a broad variety of marxisms, with (trivial) attacks on genuinely flawed points of reason.

Also, if you think Marcuse is anything more than a hack I pity you.

Kolakowski provides a brief survey overview of Marxist thought prior to New Times and Autonomism.

>>4228252
The reason to read Cleaver's introduction before Volume 1 is to realise that every category in Marx is politically contingent on the balance of class struggle. Every category.

[Anonymous No.4228296]

>>4228076

I wouldn't consider Grundrisse before reading Capital. There's some intresting stuff in it though, the fragment on machines in particular.

Which can be read through fairly quickly here:
http://autonomousuniversity.org/content/general-intellect

[Anonymous No.4228301]

>>4228257
>>4228283
From what you guys are saying, I get the impression that Kolakowski's book is the equivalent to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

But because I never like getting just one viewpoint on this sort of thing, are there any other overviews of different schools of Marxist thought that you'd recommend?

[Anonymous No.4228307]

why do marxists compare capitalism to feudalism? I ask because it seems backward, every instance of socialization [coming closer to Marx's ideal] has lead to an overall decline in the average person's well-being and an even MORE clearly defined servitude to person's who take power with little / minority consent.

[Anonymous No.4228308]

>>4228301
There's a very very bad book by Callinicos (UK SWP) on Trotskyism's variants: http://www.marxists.de/trotism/callinicos/index.htm

I've not found the variety of Marxism presented anywhere like in Kolakowski. I had to earn my reading by chasing currents and sitting through endless schism fights amongst tired Leninist sects.

[Anonymous No.4228327]

>>4228307
>Every instance
Because you know sweet fuck all about Catalonian or Hungarian workers collectives. You know nothing about the workplace soviets in 1917 and 1918. You know nothing about working in a union as opposed to a boss controlled site. You know nothing about Mondragon or Rochdale.

Fuck you cunt.

[Anonymous No.4228338]

>>4228307
None of this true, maybe you should pick up a book some time? Maybe try reading it?

[Anonymous No.4228339]

>>4228307
>every instance of socialization [coming closer to Marx's ideal] has lead to an overall decline in the average person's well-being and an even MORE clearly defined servitude to person's who take power with little / minority consent.
Oh boy, this argument again!

Short version: it's dangerous to try talking about what "Marx's ideal" was because he wrote a lot more about capitalism than he did about communism.

Slightly less long version: a lot of Marxist thinkers didn't really know what sort of ideal to try to create, or were subject to all sorts of external pressures (wars, counterrevolutions, etc.) that made for much less than ideal conditions for the creation of a free society. The world hates socialism: note the Pinochet coup, for instance, where democratically elected socialists were replaced by an authoritarian nightmare which got support from free marketeers because they were going to have a somewhat more, uh, free market.

And I'm glad you described the servitude as "more clearly defined" rather than just "more": one of the problems with criticizing capitalism is that the forms of servitude and power than are all over the fucking place are also kind of subtle and disguise themselves as freedoms of various sorts.

Long version: consider actually reading Marx and various Marxists one of these days. You might discover that they aren't all idiots and strawmen for capitalist ideologues to attack. Kind of like my discoveries reading various (right-) libertarian, classical liberal, conservative, etc. thinkers.

[Anonymous No.4228369]

>>4228327
So pretty much, you accept all of the bourgeois propaganda about actually existing socialist states and so choose the most obscure, short-lived examples of socialism. You're a waste of space and no better than the average liberal.

[Anonymous No.4228371]

>>4228283

well, I might skim through Kolakowski again and see if can find anyhting there I didn't see the first time.

While I'm not a huge fan of Marcuse, dismissing him with oneliners is quite silly. And while I agree on Lukacs biography, that in itself
has very little to do with his thought. Anyone just looking for an introduction will likely only read History and Class consciousness, and that has almost as little to do with Stalinism as Zizek does.

Cleaver also does a good (but slightly biased) introduction to marxist currents leading up to autonomism in his first chapter. And he tries to relate Marx's categories to class struggle yes. That is all constructive good and fine, I just do not find it a very correct reading of Capital as it is written by Marx.

[Anonymous No.4228380]

If you can't defend the successes of the Soviet Union or Maoist China you're not a socialist.

[Anonymous No.4228384]

>>4228371
>And while I agree on Lukacs biography, that in itself has very little to do with his thought. Anyone just looking for an introduction will likely only read History and Class consciousness, and that has almost as little to do with Stalinism as Zizek does.
I've read a few of the essays in HaCC; what other stuff of his is worth reading? If anything?

[Anonymous No.4228400]

>>4228307
>every instance of socialization [coming closer to Marx's ideal] has lead to an overall decline in the average person's well-being

Where's your citation?

[Anonymous No.4228409]

>>4228369
I see no reason to rush to defensism of states where:
* the value form underwent expanded reproduction
* wage labour existed
* the working class possessed no political power
* the working class possessed no industrial power

If you want to talk at length about micropolitics in soviet societies, get back to me after you've read Pirani, Fitzpatrick and Andrle about working class experience in the Soviet Union.

(The Soviet Union and China have been some of the least worst capitalist states to live within; particularly for their GDP. *I SEE NO REASON TO DEFEND CAPITALIST STATES FROM THE REVOLUTION*)

>>4228371
Ask yourself if Marcuse empowers or disempowers the class in itself in the concrete struggle.

For Lukacs, I'd suggest flicking through the bits of Aczel and Meray, Revolt of the Mind for Lukacs actions in a 1955 purge of socialist humanists; and then reading Wiktor Woroszylski's article in Novi Kultura from 1956 where he interviews Lukacs.

I have little interest in Lukacs as an aesthetician, and almost only have an interest in him in terms of the viability of a socialist humanist Stalinism (see: Nagy _New Course_)

[Anonymous No.4228422]

>>4228384

I wouldn't bother with anything else, if you're not particularily interested in literary criticism. His hegelian marxism was picked up later by the Frankfurt School, who I think did more interesting things with it.

Otherwise, Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy is from the same time, and a history/criticism of revisionism and marxism/leninism, with hegelian overtones.

[Anonymous No.4228433]

>>4228422
Well, I am interested in literary criticism, actually! So that's good. What should I read from the Frankfurt school, though? I've got a copy of One-Dimensional Man I've browsed through a bit, and I know that Dialectic of Enlightenment is apparently the real important Frankfurt text. Anything else?

Thanks for the Korsch recommendation, though.

[Anonymous No.4228434]

>>4228422
>Korsch
Why can't I hold all this +1

Speaking of underrated left coms:
Pannekoek
Ruhle

[Anonymous No.4228465]

>>4228409
Even if one accepts the debatable claim that the Soviet Union was state capitalist, it was still revolution against imperialism and posed a threat to capitalism as a world system. If you want to talk about THE revolution, they were it. And even if it wasn't perfect, there were undeniable successes in industrialization and living standards to show for it. Even look at today's China, much farther down the capitalist road, and you'll see that the country has far more sovereignty over it's economy than any other country in the third world and the reason is that the country is controlled by a communist party with their own vision of socialism. If you can concede that these states are some way better to live in, why can't acknowledge that that is due to a certain conception of socialist strategy? There's a reason most socialists in the world are still Marxist-Leninists, despite everything.

[Anonymous No.4228473]

>>4228205
my children aren't wieners who cry for a free ride instead of working hard

>>4228189
increasingly bigger with every generation of capitalist economy, after thousands of years of autocracy, u mad?

[Anonymous No.4228477]

>>4228465
>bourgeois revolution
>poses threat to capitalism
Do you even exchange labour power for a wage?

>And even if it wasn't perfect, there were undeniable successes in industrialization and living standards to show for it.
This is the apologetic given for 19th century England by the way.

>sovereignty
My class knows no nations: I'm beginning to suspect you don't share my relationship to production.

>If you can concede that these states are some way better to live in, why can't acknowledge that that is due to a certain conception of socialist strategy? There's a reason most socialists in the world are still Marxist-Leninists, despite everything.
If you want me to call you a bourgeois shill, then you are a bourgeois shill. If you want me to ascribe capitalism in china to the ideology of leninism as a substitutionalist ideology from outside of class praxis, then yes: Leninism inflicted the value form and primitive capitalist accumulation on the Chinese working class and he should be resurrected to be hung for this.

You sound like a fucking social democrat with your defence of capitalism, do you realise?

[Anonymous No.4228497]

>>4228477
And you sound like an idealist wanker writing off imperialism. All of this talk about the value form means nothing without examining the conditions that give rise to it. Do you think first world workers are exploited just because they receive a wage? We're way fucking past that. You should read Zak Cope or Samir Amin.

[Anonymous No.4228515]

>>4228497
>hur dur surplus transfer
Imperialism doesn't relate to class praxis or alienation. You're holding with the compradors in a contention between capitals.

The socially average rate of labour productivity holds in constructing "average" labour which due to labour immobility means that _wherever you go, there your class is_.

Stop going around begging a bourgeois state to free the fuck out of you.

[Anonymous No.4228532]

>>4228409

So Marcuse's a defeatist academical marxist, so what? It's not meant to be material for direct agitation. Neither is most of what Marx wrote, I would argue. That doesn't stop us from using the more theoretical writings to draw concrete political conclusions from them. But sure, the Frankfurt School is more suited to cultural criticism compared to analysis of capital or actual practical action.

>>4228433

Dialectic of Enlightenment is actually more like a collection of essays, which can be read separatly.

My personal favourite to read is Adorno's Minima Moralia. It's a collection of around 150 aphorisms/observations, some of which have very little to do with marxism. Not very good as some kind of political guide to action, but I find it very enjoyable to read and occasionally very insightful. It gives a good feel for the Frankfurt School critique.

Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History is also good reading, and very short. Personally I tend to read both of these almost more as works of literature than as marxist analysis though.

Of Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance/Repressive Tolerance is sometimes made out to some kind of strawman call for totalitarianism/censorship, but is kinda interesting. Maybe not his best work though.

An Essay on Liberation and The End of Utopia/ The Problem of Violence and the Radical Opposition (http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/67endutopia/67EndUtopiaProbViol.htm)) are otherwise short and fairly good examples of Marcuse, aside from One-dimensional man.

Habermas is nowadays mainstream sociology and perhaps not that important to read in the context of the Frankfurt School or if you are interested in marxism. André Gorz might be interesting as someone who continued writing in the vein of the Marcuse, but that's going off into obscure territory.

the aaaaarg.org archive is good if you need to get ahold of the texts also.

[Anonymous No.4228545]

>>4228532
>So Marcuse's a defeatist academical marxist, so what?
Thesis 11 is so what.

[Anonymous No.4228563]

>>4228545
And his point still stands: there's no reason that the fact that Marcuse simply interpreted the world means that you can't use his work to try to change it. Appreciating a thinker's thought isn't a matter of simple wholesale agreement; you can make use of it while modifying it or disagreeing with large portions.

[Anonymous No.4228565]

>>4227648
Try "Reading Capital" by Althusser and Balibar.

[Anonymous No.4228570]

>>4228563
>And his point still stands: there's no reason that the fact that Marcuse simply interpreted the world means that you can't use his work to try to change it. Appreciating a thinker's thought isn't a matter of simple wholesale agreement; you can make use of it while modifying it or disagreeing with large portions.
The point of Thesis 11 is that non-praxical and unclassed thought is entirely useless to the self-liberation of the working class. Marcuse's distance from struggle, and Marcuse's commitment not to struggle, means that all he has produced is bourgeois ideology. This is the point of Zizek tripeing on all the time about "pure ideology." Lenin might have been a cunt, but even Lenin was right about the class composition of the Ukrainian countryside in the analysis he produced and published while he was linked to proletarian struggle ( http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8iv/index.htm ).

[Anonymous No.4228591]

>>4228545

Again, oneliners aren't that constructive, even if they come from The Very Scripture Of The Old Man Himself. The problems of academic marxism are obvious. That all doesn't mean you can draw some kind of clean cut line between interpretation and action. For an academic, Marcuse was extremely active in the actual protest and resistance movements in his immidiate millieu (no one reads Counterrevolution and Revolt, which isn't worse than Gramsci anyway), whatever one might think of the new left student activists . And we could probably continue on from here to Adorno calling the cops on protesters, and so on, etc.

But do we really need to go through all that? Even though I might not be in complete agreement with him, Cleaver (who himself is an academic, however much he may dream of running off with the zapatistas) does a quite good job of discussing the limitations of the Frankfurt School. Still, they have been an important current and an essential influence for more modern and practical groups.

[Anonymous No.4228600]

>>4228591
And the day I see someone use "intersection" in a meeting to do something _other_ than try to sell out to the bourgeois x-ists is a day I'll get down on my knees in front of West German Doctor Professor (habil.) and accept that culture is a separate sphere of action, and that workers were too stupid to revolt for a hundred years despite empirical evidence otherwise.

[Anonymous No.4228615]

>>4228570

please, let's not get into some kind of who's the most workerest worker of the true white male industrial proletariat.

Who shall we remove after we remove the academics then? Don't try to tell me party officials are somehow more in touch with the working class because of their parti membership, and then let's look at Marx himself sitting in the library years on end, gathering material for Capital, writing for the New York Tribune, living on Engels factory money.

There is no either/or about how radical or activist people are, which in itself is no reason for not taking that into consideration when eveluating their works.

And am I missing something, or did you just use "The Elvis of Cultural Theory" to criticise someone for producing solely bourgeouis ideology, since they are academics?

>>4228600

Sorry if I'm missing something in translation, but are you talking about modern intersectionality theory? Because that has fuck all to do with the frankfurt school. The fact that marxism has grown beyond stereotypes of white male steel-muscled blonde factory workers might though.

[Anonymous No.4228624]

>>4228615
>Who shall we remove after we remove the academics then? Don't try to tell me party officials are somehow more in touch with the working class because of their parti membership, and then let's look at Marx himself sitting in the library years on end, gathering material for Capital, writing for the New York Tribune, living on Engels factory money.
You've just discovered that Marxism is yet another bourgeois ideology.

>There is no either/or about how radical or activist people are, which in itself is no reason for not taking that into consideration when eveluating their works.
Epistemology in relation to inductive reality isn't classless. (Feyerabend, Lakatos).

And this isn't an Elvis

>The fact that marxism has grown beyond stereotypes of white male steel-muscled blonde factory workers might though.

You wouldn't know a factory if you were in one, and you probably are.

[Anonymous No.4228647]

>>4228624

Feyerabend was a professor of philosphy. Are you sure you wold trust his statement, given that apparently anyone not purely proletarian is a bourgeois producer of pure ideology?

If you would actually read what I write, you'd notice that I completely agree that class position influences whatever people write or do. But not classless dos not imply the possibility of some kind of easily identifiable pure proletarian standpoint, compared to which everything else is trash to be completely dismissed.

Are you for some reason talking about the concept of the social factory now or what? You know this discussion would be a lot easier if we'd NOT try our best to talk past each other.

[Anonymous No.4228659]

>>4228647
I am talking about the social factory in its pre-Negri formation, ala James and Dalla Costa.

It is much harder to know who's right out of the variety of partial and segmented class understandings. It is much, much more easy to identify who's wrong: who is letting a bourgeois state piss in their pocket, or who is clearly arguing for subservience in the face of the boss.

[Anonymous No.4228680]

>>4228659

Pre-Negri operaismo is better operaismo, yes. It seems we are in a lot more agreement about who the most promising people to read are at least.

Though lately I've mostly been reading Robert Kurz and the German wertkritik texts. In a somewhat related note, do you have any kind of opinion on Postone? Been putting off reading Time, Labor and Social Domination, since it's too large to read virtually and I'm too broke to order it, but it feels quite promising..

Anyway, I would of course agree with the last statement, though we obviously do not agree completely on how easily or absolutely some people should be dismissed, or maybe on from what areas of analysis

[Anonymous No.4228685]

>>4228680
>labour is social domination
Yes. E.P. Thompson sees this in "Time, Work Discipline": leisure/pleasure is much better than relief-from-labour/labour.

Incidentally if you ever find an English Language year book of hungarian sociology, there's an article in one of them on work / relief from work dichotomies that I wish I could find again.

>too large to read virtually
:(. And I just found a pdf for you :( ( http://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/moishe-postone-time-labor-and-social-domination.pdf )

>do not agree completely on how easily or absolutely some people should be dismissed
The main way / reason why I dismiss Frankfurt is that I spend my time on the factory floor, intellectually, organisationally, in order to live. I've pre-dismissed them.

I get more out of one work place meeting than I usually do out of two weeks reading btw. I strongly and organically feel that collective subjectivity is the way forward for the class; and that the class knows through action what I can never know through the mind.

[Anonymous No.4228723]

>>4228685

You wouldn't remeber who wrote that? The only now active Hungarian sociologist I can remember reading stuff by lately is Gáspár Miklós Tamás, for example here trying to prove EP Thompson and a large chunk of other assorted marxists are Rousseauian socialists and not marxist:

http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse22/tellingTheTruthAboutClass.htm

Thanks, I'll give the .pdf a go and see if it's good enough to continue looking into. Can't usually read longer texts properly on my computer though.

In one way I can completely understand that kind of pre-dismissal of FS. There is not a lot to get there in terms of practical organization or
concrete economical or politial analysis. I enjoy especially Benjamin and Adorno, but mostly in the way I enjoy literature, not as marxism. I do think there are useful things to take from them as such, and think they are influential enough that if someone wants an overview of marxism or needs to figure out a college thesis they could do worse, but they are in no way essential.

I'd agree that Workplace meetings or other forms of self-organization are better than theorizing. Problem for me is that not a lot of workplaces have good enough organization for that, and sometimes it's more or less structurally impossible, also unemployment etc.

[Anonymous No.4229000]

>>4228723
I'm pretty sure one of the coauthors or editors was Hegedüs András

In lieu of a proper reply: bumpan.

[Anonymous No.4229002]

>>4228180
>Implying Communism/Socialism didn't contribute to the deaths of millions by starvation after the Bolshevik revolution.

[Anonymous No.4229010]

>>4228327
Yeah the problem with your whole "workplace soviets in 1917 and 1918" is that little "Great Russian Famine of 1921" where millions of people starved to death, some resorting to cannibalism of grave bodies to stave off the hunger. Hunger which should of been mitigated by relief supplies withheld by your altruistic government to be sold on the market.

[Anonymous No.4229112]

daily reminder to never trust a marxist academic

[Anonymous No.4229941]

>>4229010
>government
Oh, you mean the problem was that a bourgeois party in charge of a bourgeois style state apparatus deliberately starved workers?

How is this not class war as usual?

>You know the problem with Tories is that they starve four million bengalis to death because they wont let Australians feed them.

[Anonymous No.4229947]

>>4227951
>counterproductive for communism.

Counterproductive for a concept. Productive for reality.

[Anonymous No.4229948]

I bet none of you nerds even read the Phenomenology.

[Anonymous No.4229956]

>>4229948
Why would I read that, it came at the breakfast table as part of my basic religious education.

[Anonymous No.4230086]

>>4229941
all implementations fail, because it's a system that works inherently against human behavior. you might be a sadistic fuck, but the rest of us don't want to go through another couple of millions of deaths and famine so you can say that really wasn't it dipshit

[Anonymous No.4230105]

>>4230086
So human nature is compatible to mass capitalist starvation and mass wage enslavement?

Why thank you for knowing human nature. You are a man of great δίκη.

[Anonymous No.4230117]

>>4230105
>having a job
>enslavement
>starvation

reaching THIS much

[Anonymous No.4230131]

>>4228723
>http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse22/tellingTheTruthAboutClass.htm

Thanks m8 that's gr8 I r8 it 8 out of 8.

Says exactly what I need it to for a paper.

[Anonymous No.4230660]

>>4228723
I've worked over this article and I think it has a number of significant problems in dealing with the mixed and uneven nature of proletarian class consciousness. Unions represent both formations that express the in itself of the class and the for itself of the class.

This is a limitation of the paper. I like it on drawing out the fact that positive consciousnesses of the worker structured to sell their labour power are in fact products of a non-marxist ideology.

I think the paper is wrong on epistemology. The labour process opens the worker to a negative epistemology of the inner secret of capital that the bourgeoisie can never know. (That's why I'm an autonomist). These knowledges (class consciousness) will of course be sectoral, conditional and partial. And mixed with bourgeois ideology.

[Anonymous No.4230692]

When is /lit/ going to have an automatic permaban for dilettantes who haven't ready any Marxist texts and smugly mention human nature, Soviet Union, good in theory but bad in practice hurr etc. in Marxism threads as if they've single-handedly disproved the entirety of Marxist thought?

[Anonymous No.4230695]

>>4230692
no, those posters are great, because they give us an opportunity to make fun of them

[Anonymous No.4230697]

>>4230692
Email moot / http://www.4chan.org/feedback

[Anonymous No.4230699]

>>4229947
Exactly. They reproduce the current reality.

[Anonymous No.4230703]

>>4230699
>praxis
>reproduces bourgeois society
Yes, necessarily, read your fucking Marx on the totality.

praxis, unlike ideology, also reproduces the current reality with a greater degree of class power.

[Anonymous No.4230710]

>>4230692
You need to let them learn.

[Anonymous No.4230716]

>>4230703
I'm talking about what most anarchists mean by 'praxis'. Please tell me how feeding the poor, doing drugs in squats and running tourist attractions are beneficiary for the proletariat.

[Anonymous No.4230719]

>>4230716
Well if you use words with imprecision then I am going to shit down your neck.

By praxis I mean fucking praxis, not grey market production of zero price use values to reproduce the lumpenproletariat.

[Anonymous No.4230723]

>>4230716
Let us return to my earlier point, which you strawmanned:

>Libertarian communists have been more in touch with praxis than you statist II/III "international"ists have been.

Number of revolutions shot down by II/IIIrd Internationalists? Numerable but very large.

Number of revolutions shot down by Libertarian Communists? Apart from the massive POUM fuck-up by the CNT/FAI, libertarian communists have been doing pretty fucking Neeto. Hell, in Hungary they arrested the secret police to prevent them being murdered by right-wing populists.

More importantly: Lib coms don't go around setting up bourgeois states all the time to replace direct class action, and the massive fuck up by the CNT/FAI in relation to the Spanish state has been thoroughly castigated.

* * *

Touching praxis is the most important feature in developing a revolutionary organisation.

[Anonymous No.4230751]

>>4230723
I wouldn't call that strawman, it's what I've experienced. And add the biggest insult of anarchism, Zizek is spot on in his observation:

> I certainly can understand where the appeal of anarchism lies. Even though I am quite aware of the contradictory and ambiguous nature of Marx’s relationship with anarchism, Marx was right when he drew attention to how anarchists who preach “no state no power” in order to realize their goals usually form their own society which obeys the most authoritarian rules. My first problem with anarchism is always, “Yeah, I agree with your goals, but tell me how you are organized.” For me, the tragedy of anarchism is that you end up having an authoritarian secret society trying to achieve anarchist goals. The second point is that I have problems with how anarchism is appropriate to today’s problems. I think if anything, we need more global organization. I think that the left should disrupt this equation that more global organization means more totalitarian control…. Maybe my experience is too narrow, but it’s not limited to some mysterious Balkan region. I have contacts in England, France, Germany, and more — and all the time, beneath the mask of this consensus, there was one person accepted by some unwritten rules as the secret master. The totalitarianism was absolute in the sense that people pretended that they were equal, but they all obeyed him. The catch was that it was prohibited to state clearly that he was the boss. You had to fake some kind of equality. The real state of affairs couldn’t be articulated. Which is why I’m deeply distrustful of this “let’s just coordinate this in an egalitarian fashion.” I’m more of a pessimist. In order to safeguard this equality, you have a more sinister figure of the master, who puts pressure on the others to safeguard the purity of the non-hierarchic principle. This is not just theory. I would be happy to hear of groups that are not caught in this strange dialectic.

>Lib coms don't go around setting up bourgeois states all the time to replace direct class action
I'm surprised that people on the left 20 years after the fall of the soviet bloc still dare to call it a bourgeois system. I mean, are you fucking nuts? You either purposefully dull the meaning of the word 'bourgeois', or you completely lack the analytic skills to compare liberal capitalism with the USSR.

>inb4 USSR nostalgia
Not a fucking drop of it.

I see no sensible theoretical basis that a state necessarily excludes direct action. I'll dare to go further: by taking over nuisances of organization (secret police, social services, necessary bureaucratic processes), only a strong state can make direct action the most effective.

[Anonymous No.4230788]

>>4230751
>it's what I've experienced.
You've not experienced the Wobs or shop stewards movements in an upswing. You've not experienced the sudden shift in ideology that occurred in 56 or 68 amongst social democratic and bolshevik workers. Nor have you experienced the Northern Factory movement in Italy getting out from under its parties.

You've experienced dilettante lumpenproles with no connection to the factory bumfucking around with a "cultural analysis of power."

They're as relevant to struggle as Leninists. I agree with you that these people are fucking useless.

>[Zizek]
Is right here. But I'm not talking about your squatting shits.

>I'm surprised that people on the left 20 years after the fall of the soviet bloc still dare to call it a bourgeois system. I mean, are you fucking nuts? You either purposefully dull the meaning of the word 'bourgeois', or you completely lack the analytic skills to compare liberal capitalism with the USSR.
* Value was reproduced in an expanded form
* From wage labour
* And faced realisation on a market

I'm sorry, but that's fucking capitalism. And the ideology of capital is... bourgeois.

>I see no sensible theoretical basis that a state necessarily excludes direct action. I'll dare to go further: by taking over nuisances of organization (secret police, social services, necessary bureaucratic processes), only a strong state can make direct action the most effective.

Except this isn't the state formation that active praxical workers produce. Workers in revolt produce systems of councils. We've known this for fucking years. And councillar governement doesn't produce secret police, it produces open courts. The Workers' State of Councils doesn't produce social services, it directly operates production for need as in the Food and Medical supply situation in November/December in Budapest 1956. Government by proletarians doesn't produce bureaucracy, it further produces democracy amongst the class, revolutionising the technical and social relations of production.

Direct Action and the Bourgeois State formation are incompatible. A workers state looks a hell of a lot different to the PC CC RSLDP(b) controlling the RSFSR, even in 1918. It looks like the fucking workplace councils (where yes, Gladys, the Bolsheviks commanded working pluralities of sentiment).

[Anonymous No.4230840]

>>4230788
>And councillar governement doesn't produce secret police, it produces open courts.
You are not just a Utopian fool for advocating this, but you clearly disregard (whitewash, even) anarchist history. Makhno had a secret police. And for a good fucking reason. Every leftist revolution must protect itself from the bourgeois and there is NO EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE. Open courts, don't do detective work, phone-tapping, busts, COINTELPRO, you bloody hippy!

>The Workers' State of Councils doesn't produce social services, it directly operates production for need as in the Food and Medical supply
SOCIAL SERVICES isn't about distributing food and med supplies, you mongrel.

>Government by proletarians doesn't produce bureaucracy
Every anarchist society so far had bureaucracy, you tit. You might not LIKE to call it that, but when you have limited amount of food you wish to distribute evenly among people, you'll have bureaucracy. When you want to run postal services, you'll have bureaucracy. I'm not saying it's desirable, I'm saying its necessary.

>it further produces democracy amongst the class, revolutionising the technical and social relations of production.
Just as a state can do it. Oh, yes. More effectively.

[Anonymous No.4230852]

>>4230840
I don't care what you're arguing anon, that picture just went top of my spank bank and I thought you should know I'll be sending you warm supplicant vibes later for this treat. Evening, comrade.

[Anonymous No.4230853]

>>4230751
Zizek's argument is taken apart here:

http://www.alpineanarchist.org/r_anarchist_hypothesis.html

It's a complete strawman. The dude is either deliberately spreading misinformation or has no clue what he's talking about.

[Anonymous No.4230858]

>>4230840
Unlike a bureaucracy delegated mandated recallable and rotating positions aren't a fixed hierarchy.

Makhno was full of problems as you very well know. Running a secret police is one of them. You can readily bring people before open courts for processing, and run this in the face of a council, shit, workers tribunals are readily formed in capital. See M or Caucasian Chalk Circle for fantasies thereof.

>Social service isn't about food.
I really want to make you sit down and read the chapter from the Hammonds' village labourer on the poor house system.

>When you want to run postal services, you'll have a bureacracy
Great way to try to conceal the social relations of production beneath technical relations. And I bet you believe foremen are necessary too?

Feel free to expose yourself further, your choice of reaction image is telling.

[Anonymous No.4230911]

>>4230853
I personally know two anarchist organizations where people pretended that they are equal, but they obey an alpha. It's absolutely ridiculous, but true.

>>4230858
>Unlike a bureaucracy delegated mandated recallable and rotating positions aren't a fixed hierarchy.
But still a functioning hierarchy, basically. Nevertheless, I see no reason why your preferred form of bureaucracy would be incompatible with a state.

>You can readily bring people before open courts for processing
>>detective work
>>phone-tapping
>>busts
>>COINTELPRO
>>21st fucking century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSwqnR327fk

>Great way to try to conceal the social relations of production beneath technical relations.
Again, you might not LIKE to call it bureaucracy, but it does the same things, the same way, with your eyes on arbitrary hierarchies. Denialism.

>And I bet you believe foremen are necessary too?
Could be, especially at start, but preferably not later.

[Anonymous No.4230945]

>>4230911
>I see no reason why your preferred form of bureaucracy would be incompatible with a state.

Not him, but look up the definition of the State -- start with Engels, since he defines it as a power situated above and separate from society.

If we want to call each and every organization a State because it's organized (or because there's something resembling the delegation of power) pretty much eliminates the purpose of communism: the abolition of private property and the State.

[Anonymous No.4230947]

>>4230911
>Again, you might not LIKE to call it bureaucracy, but it does the same things, the same way, with your eyes on arbitrary hierarchies. Denialism.

"Relations of production" it is in Marx. Read him. Bureaucracies as we know them directly implement the private possession of property internally, with a relation of production that centers power in the hands of those who own the capital. The example of a postal service is fucking apt because it is production.

>COINTELPRO
OH NO, WE CAN'T BRING SPIES BEFORE A COURT, HOW WILL WE BUST A UNION NEXT TIME.

Perhaps you don't understand in the lower stage of communism the necessity for democracy within the ruling class. That democracy requires open fucking courts.

There's no reason to have secret police when we can retroactively criminalise subsisting off profit.

There's no reason to have a secret police when open police bring their wires to court all the fucking time.

>but preferably not later.
I bet you consider the technical relations of production "unclassed" too.

[Anonymous No.4230950]

>>4230858

>no secret police
>bourgeois backed coup attempts
>bourgeois backed food shortages
>bourgeois backed sabotages
>bourgeois backed secretly printed counter-revolutionary press

When will these people learn?!

[Anonymous No.4230980]

>>4230950
Treason is easy to try before an open court.
>Food shortages
Seems like you've got a major problem with your ability to organise agricultural workers, mate.
>Sabotage
Oh lord, why don't you tell me about the promparty?
>Secretly printed counter revolutionary press
I don't know about you, but the number of people who read and believe the newspaper here is infinitesimal.

You do realise which century it is?
You do realise that you're talking about the class as an inert mass which a state acts upon?

[Anonymous No.4230983]

>>4230947
>There's no reason to have secret police when we can retroactively criminalise subsisting off profit.
Good luck "criminalizing subsisting off profit" for the rest of the world. Global picture.

>open police
Ah, you mean a system, which is most easily penetrated? Good idea!

Let's also change the liberated territory's flag to pic.

[Anonymous No.4231001]

>>4230983
Given that workplace soviets sat continuously, why in the fuck was a special commissariat required for non-public police operations.

There were plenty of open soviets capable of penetrating, arresting, and trying white cells.

No, it certainly wasn't a matter of centralising power in the hands of a group of non-workers in charge of a bourgeois state apparatus.

>Good luck criminalising being bourgeois... global picture.

I don't think you understand the abolition of the wages system.

[Anonymous No.4231007]

>>4230980
>>>no secret police
>>>bourgeois backed coup attempts
>>>bourgeois backed food shortages
>>>bourgeois backed sabotages
>>>bourgeois backed secretly printed counter-revolutionary press
>promparty

>You do realise which century it is?
The century when the US exports CIA trained, highly armed fake revolutionaries to Syria and Lybia, uses drone strikes, satellite images, sabotages and causes food shortages in Venezuela and Cuba, used sabotage against the USSR and ex-Yugoslavian worker owned factories, controls global press and therefore opinion and has the strongest military, diplomatic capabilities ever known in history.
>>>>>>>>promparty
>>>>>>>>open police
>>>>>>>>open court

[Anonymous No.4231013]

>>4231001
>>Good luck criminalising being bourgeois... global picture.
Misquote!

>I don't think you understand the abolition of the wages system.
I don't think you understand the global bourgeois.

[Anonymous No.4231019]

>Implying ideological and theoretical battles aren't an important supplement to the material and practical application of Marxism

[Anonymous No.4231039]

>>4231019

[Anonymous No.4231100]

So, about the reading list in >>4228145

I'm having trouble thinking of specific questions beyond "how can we improve this?", but here goes: let's suppose I've read a bit of Marx and want to branch out into reading about how folks went about trying to apply this. Where should I start with Leninism, Maoism, etc.?

[Anonymous No.4231209]

>>4231100
You should really start with Physical force chartism and the 2nd International. Critique of the Gotha Programme.

Lenin isn't the obvious outcome. Try some Daniel DeLeon, USAs own Lenin. Then do some Lenin. Then read his critics from the left. Then infantile disorder.

[Anonymous No.4231270]

Should I feel bad for calling myself a Marxist if I'm only interested in Zizek, Graeber, Frankfurt School and Foucault?

[Anonymous No.4231272]

>>4231270

Eurocommunist scum pls go

[Anonymous No.4231275]

>>4231270
Smelly dumb superstructure scum

[Anonymous No.4231292]

>>4231275

>Implying considerations of the dominant ideology and cultural hegemony of the ruling class isn't as much an impediment to revolution as the material base

[Anonymous No.4231539]

>>4231292
It isn't. Class praxis arises from the point of production.

[Anonymous No.4231544]

>>4231539
>class praxis
Ew.

[Anonymous No.4231553]

>>4231539

>2013
>Vulgar Marxism

[Anonymous No.4231655]

>>4230692
Can someone please explain this?
Or at least reccomend a text where this is refuted? This entire thread has completely gone over my head and I am looking forward to reading the prescribed texts.
Was just wondering if there was a straight-forward "pleb friendly" response to this cliched critique.

[Anonymous No.4231673]

>>4231553
>>4231544
I have faith in the knowledge of my class exceeding my own. I look forward to the day when you're reeducated through labour.

>>4231655
>human nature
Doesn't exist. Humans are the result of their societies. See Engels on _Family, Private Property, and the State_.

>Soviet Union
Wasn't socialism, wasn't communism. You can analyse it as capitalism, or as a bureaucratic caste system.

>good in theory, bad in practice
Marx isn't a theorist of perfect socialism: he stuck to analysing practical resistance to capitalism, which is the only source of socialism.

These cliches indicate ignorance. There are strong attacks on Marxism available intellectually—they're not the attacks made by undergraduates. See, for example, Kolakowski and Solzhenitsyn's positing of a transcendent that's ontologically present in political time (ie: That you can _feel_ Christ's reality, and that this is a basic experience apprehensible to thinking creatures).

[Anonymous No.4231686]

>>4231673
Thanks will definitely read into them.
Also, what would be your (once again) pleb friendly refute to Mao.
i.e muh trillion dead

[Anonymous No.4231693]

>>4231686
My claim regarding Mao was that the CCP extracted value from feudal communities and working class communities, that it was Capitalism. (There was also a revolution in China that wasn't repressed convincingly until 1989).

I would also start enumerating the millions of dead from British Imperialism; in particular the 1943 Bengali famine where Churchill chose to murder by starvation 3 million or more Bengalis; because he didn't want to spare the ships.

[Anonymous No.4231893]

>>4231275
What if I also said David Harvey, Yanis Varifoukas, and Richard D Wolff?

[Anonymous No.4231906]

>>4231673

> Doesn't exist. Humans are the result of their societies. See Engels on _Family, Private Property, and the State_.

Too bad that people who actually study the brain disagree quite strongly with this.

[Anonymous No.4231910]

>>4231893
Based as fuck.

[Anonymous No.4231911]

>>4231906

Sorry, forgot pic.

Stephen Pinker, author of The Blank Slate, among other things.

[Anonymous No.4231934]

>>4231906
>Too bad that people who actually study the brain disagree quite strongly with this.
People who study the human brain have very limited knowledge on how thought arises from that organ. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to see how different cultures, hierarchic structures, work relations modify the process of socialization.

You could say "anger is in human nature" - ok, then in different nations, the subject's nature will manifest itself diversely (martial arts monk, politician, hunter-gatherer) retroactively shaping that very nature.

You could say that male dominance is in human nature, but from anthropological studies we know of female dominated societies, etc.

The lesson to be learned that it's quite different to study a bodily organ, and a social organ.

[Anonymous No.4231935]

>>4231906
>watch out now, we've got a scientist over here!

[Anonymous No.4231940]

>>4231934

So, you're backpedalling on their being no such thing as human nature, and you're also just knocking down straw men as to what human nature could possibly entail.

[Anonymous No.4231951]

>>4231911

Now there's a man with a hammer if I ever read one.

[Anonymous No.4231953]

>>4231940
I'm not the one who you first addressed, therefore I can not backpedal.

>you're also just knocking down straw men
I don't think you understand what a straw men is; it's pretty shitty that your line of defense consists of shouting AD HOMINEM & co. at people, while you clearly didn't even let the information to sink in.

I'd say if there's a "human nature" it's inaccessible to us. Currently, for sure.

[Anonymous No.4231956]

>>4231953
>I'd say if there's a "human nature" it's inaccessible to us.
Therefore, naturalists, evolutionary biologists and so on are doing metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.4231958]

>>4231956
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFTaiWInZ44

[Anonymous No.4231961]

>>4231911
Pinker isn't any better at all. I sincerely hope you realize no one except the adherents of pop culture of ev. psych. takes him seriously, do you?

Count yourself in.

[Anonymous No.4231974]

>>4227648

>There's a lot on this author. But I want to start somewhere. Where should I start?

How about with that author? Seriously, what the fuck? Come on!

And don't tell me "oh it's Marx so I have to begin with secondary literature". No. Start by reading the text and decide for yourself.

[Anonymous No.4231989]

Excuse me, best Marxist ever coming through.

[Anonymous No.4232078]

>>4231974
Sure, but a more pressing problem is that he wrote a shitload, so which book of his is the best to start with?

>inb4 Capital
Way too fucking long, dry, technical to recommend in full to somebody who doesn't yet have enough of an interest in Marxism to commit to it. It'll work as a first text for some people but not for others.

Hence, this thread. Well, before it turned into yet another retread of the same old tired arguments about human nature, communist history, and so on.

[Anonymous No.4232123]

>>4231989
Sorry, what?

[Anonymous No.4232129]

>>4232123
>dem turtlenecks
Oh yes...

[Anonymous No.4232140]

>>4232129
I call them "necksphincters".

[Anonymous No.4232150]

Can someone name some contemporary Marxists?

[Anonymous No.4232153]

>>4232123
>Foucault
>Marxist
I'm not sure I follow you. Care to elaborate?

[Anonymous No.4232164]

>>4232078

Well, that's understandable. I'm only taking jabs because it's in the spirit of the site. I would suggest reading the Penguin Wealth of Nations to understand the groundwork of capitalism. The reason I mention Penguin is because the table of contents gives a guide for useful omissions. Also the introductions are solid post-reading. Penguin's Kapital is the genuine article, so perhaps consider Oxford's. It's an abridged edition that's really good. If I recall it's around 500, which is a country hayride compared to the 3000 some pages of the original text. Enjoy your reading

[Anonymous No.4232175]

>>4232150
Fredric Jameson
Alain Badiou
Slavoj Zizek
Adrian Johnston

[Anonymous No.4232297]

>>4232164
What if I've already read Wealth of Nations? Or large chunks of it, at least?

[Anonymous No.4232695]

>>4232297

I was recommended a lot earlier in this thread, but if you're interested in the basic ideas discussed in Capital, you could try Value, Price and Profit (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm).). It covers in a very basic sense the Labor Theory of Value (as understood by Marx).

Also already recommended; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm).). This covers, again, very basically, the 'Marxian' idea of scientific socialism in contrast with Utopianism.

I don't think there is anything wrong with reading introductory propaganda before the genuine article, so long as you actually do intend to read the latter if you're interested -- nothing is worse than a pamphlet-intellectual. I imagine that is how most people come to more complex ideas anyway. Marxism in particular is one of those concepts of which the majority of supporters only have a basic understanding of the theoretical material, the greater part of their passion being fueled by class logic and that 'practical' knowledge that such a great fuss is always made of (for good reason).

[Anonymous No.4232705]

>>4232153
>>4232123
Foucault isn't a Marxist.

>>4231989
Selma James looks pretty weird in drag.

[Anonymous No.4232711]

>>4232175
>>4232150
Dyer-Witheford
Harry Cleaver
Silvia Federici
"Luther Blisset"
Steve Wright
Dave Eden

[Anonymous No.4232714]

>>4232705
he's a queer

all queers are Marxist

[Anonymous No.4232723]

>>4232714
Speaking as a Marxist: I fucking wish. Do you know how easy the revolution would be with an instant 30% of the population or more on side?

Ever gobbled a mate's balls in high school? Due to that you can describe the nature of capitalist society and its own mechanisms of self-destruction; and, as a result take social action to hasten this condition.

[Anonymous No.4232727]

>>4232723
>30% of the population
u wot m8
where you live San Francisco?

[Anonymous No.4232733]

>>4232727
Sydney, but http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/resources/bib-homoprev.html

Kinsey reports 37% of males had homosexual experiences to orgasm. I think this is a pretty good definition of "queer".

[Anonymous No.4232749]

I have never gotten a straight answer from a communist about this:

If communism arises out of the failure of capitalism due to its internal contradictions, then wouldn't the most effective way to bring about communism be to accelerating those contradictions i.e. by being as capitalistic as possible?

[Anonymous No.4232757]

>>4232733
what's a homosexual experience? jacking it to a picture of a girl with a dick in her mouth?

Kinsey himself was a flaming queer so I wouldn't be surprised if he fudged a few numbers

[Anonymous No.4232760]

>>4232733
>Kinsey
You serious right now? Do people still regard his inflated numbers as correct?

[Anonymous No.4232769]

Execution by Hunger - Miron Dolot

[Anonymous No.4232771]

I am unable to understand modern marxists. You have fairly close to perfect socialist states in say, Denmark and other nordic countries, yet still want some kind of global revolution that just creates suffering on a mass scale. I think its pretty clear that socialism works well in an educated, homogeneous, somewhat smaller society.

Here is my thing. If I meet a self avowed marxist (the kind who disdains stalinsim, stalinists you really cant argue with) I ask: what do you do with those who disagree with you and refuse to give up capitalism?

If you oppress them, loot them, or stick em in Gulags, you get a repeat of the 20th century. If you let em do their thing but tax them hard but fair, your a nordic socialist. May my daughter never bring home a communist.

[Anonymous No.4232775]

>>4232749
What you understand to be capitalism as a surface phenomena isn't the deep phenomena of capitalism.

Plus any organised action by workers to defend or advance themselves heighten these contradictions anyway.

Building a business is capitalism. Building _a union_ is capitalism.

>>4232757
>what's a homosexual experience? jacking it to a picture of a girl with a dick in her mouth?
Depends if the girl has a dick or not. Given the internet, I'd say the rate of queerness would be about 80%.

>>4232760
I supplied an article with multiple post-Kinsey analyses and meta-analyses. In data before the 1990s the rate of "homosexual experience to orgasm" seemed to settle at 20%, with 3% of males identifying as "gay" (and a whole bunch of bis and special snowflakes).

>>4232771
Value circulates in Denmark.
Wages exist in Denmark.
Sweat is sucked in Denmark.
Denmark is capitalist. It is heading towards a revolution.

>>4232771
>what do you do with those who disagree with you and refuse to give up capitalism?
Economic systems don't ask about "ought," but "is." You can't take up or give up capitalism. Neither can I.

Communism isn't wage labour with taxes and social services. It is the abolition of wage, labour, tax and "service" in favour of a total society. It is this, because this is what happens when ownership becomes as social as the nature of production.

Your "money" is no good here sir, please take what you need.

[Anonymous No.4232805]

>>4232775
So forget money. An exchange of services or valued goods ( like gold or luxury goods) on the black market (assuming you obliterate currency), or any other example of those who deviate against the idea of need in the favor of want. I mean, there is a huge segment of society whos wants vastly outweigh their needs. Even Lenin went forward with NEP

Again, what do you do with them, the dissenters. (I dont need a lecture on what communism is).

[Anonymous No.4232816]

>>4232805
Hoarding fridges is psychotic.
Offering wages is a crime whose correct pedagogy is labour in the community.

[Anonymous No.4232823]

>>4232816
Sooo labor camps as punishment? Answer clearly. What do you do to the person who hoards fridges with the purpose of trading them to people who want more than one fridge in order to acquire more valued goods. What do you do to them as punishment, or do you let it fly.

[Anonymous No.4232826]

>>4232823
and by fly i mean, you label them as psychotic and let them continue their quasi capitalistic behavior.

[Anonymous No.4232834]

>>4232775
>Value circulates in Denmark.
>Wages exist in Denmark.
>Sweat is sucked in Denmark.
>Denmark is capitalist. It is heading towards a revolution.

happiest nation in the world

[Anonymous No.4232836]

>>4232823
Fridge trading isn't production. You know children with "collectable" cards?

>Labour camps
I don't see any reason not to imprison them in the open community. If they don't want to fulfil their sentence and regain political rights, then we can afford the indigent. Our productivity is high enough to sustain the mentally, physically and socially ill.

>>4232834
And? So? Denmark has recessions. The OCC rises.

[Anonymous No.4232845]

>>4232836
So everyone will have luxury yachts, champagne, and paid women on the side? I doubt you will be producing enough for everyone to be millionaires and not work without any exploitation. Because people want these things. Lots of people. And they are willing to trade up for it.

Your system is ideal, i agree, but fails to take into consideration natural human greed

[Anonymous No.4232857]

>>4232836
>I don't see any reason not to imprison them in the open community.
>Create a subclass of people who wont submit to the superstate, label then indigent
>how good intentions slip into stalinism

I like Denmark better

[Anonymous No.4232859]

>>4232845
>Lots of people want these things
>I pull shit out of my arse in public and expect people to debate me

I'm sorry but fuck off.

>>4232857
That's nice. Marxism isn't about "ought" but "is" and "will be." Enjoy Denmark while it lasts.

[Anonymous No.4232861]

>>4232836
>don't see any reason not to imprison them in the open community. If they don't want to fulfil their sentence and regain political rights, then we can afford the indigent. Our productivity is high enough to sustain the mentally, physically and socially ill.

It's rare for someone to be so upfront about it, but this is why anyone with Communist beliefs should have their mental health thoroughly inspected.

[Anonymous No.4232869]

>>4232859
>marxism
>working

lol Murrica will drop a bomb on you commies if it ever gets to that point. but it never will because today commies are beta males incapable of living a self-sustaining life, let alone organizing a revolution lololol

[Anonymous No.4232883]

>>4232861
By your support of the present system you doom massive segments of the population to imprisonment outside of the community in gaols for the purpose of; and, to permanent homelessness.

Anyone who believes this society is sound should have their mental health thoroughly inspected for spectacles.

[Anonymous No.4232885]

>>4232859
>enage in internet debate
>made to look like creepy stalinist
>shown to be naive to human nature
>not realizing these labour camps of yours wont become brutal gulags
>thinking people will live without creature comforts or screwing over their fellow man

Typical "marxist" and the reason why the communist states that survived '89 are all moving to a market model.

[Anonymous No.4232895]

>>4232883
yeah and those people are losers. deal with it

[Anonymous No.4232897]

>>4232885
Strawman away chap. You only make yourself look the cunt.

[Anonymous No.4232898]

>>4232895
>Fool, i will build a society based on "from those according to their ability to those according to their need and have it work"

[Anonymous No.4232901]

>>4232897
better a cunt then a naive retard who has never lived in the real world. Enjoy your basement decorated by a single portrait of Mao.

[Anonymous No.4232907]

>>4232901
And now facile ad hominems. Spread those legs.

[Anonymous No.4232905]

>>4232898
>i will build a society that is inherently against human nature and biology

face it sperglord, you're the lowest on the totem pole. somebody has to be, and in this instance it is you.

[Anonymous No.4234380]

>>4232775
>Denmark is capitalist. It is heading towards a revolution.

>vulgar Marxism 2013 edition
>teleology

[Anonymous No.4234556]

>>4234380
Value, friend, is a teleology that embodies its own contradiction.

[Anonymous No.4234658]

>>4234556
>fascism

[Anonymous No.4234662]

>>4234556
>fascism

[Anonymous No.4234665]

>>4234556


contradict this

*whips out dick*

[Anonymous No.4234753]

>>4228433
>What should I read from the Frankfurt school
Adorno's letter to his parents in '45:
Everything we'd been hoping for for years finally has come true, the whole country littered up, millions of Hans-Jürgens and Utes dead.

[Anonymous No.4235724]

>>4234688

You're wrong and I'll prove it!!!