#601
Post rating: ~
the deep state is really interesting. recently i've been studying some deep state actors such as michael hayden, dick cheney, and donald rumsfield. however you are right that as marxists a structural analysis supercedes individuals and their associated networks
#602
Post rating: +++++
quavers, an opinion is when you said "it's important" to support Sanders because he's the "left wing" of congress. Marxism-Leninism uses historical materialism developed by Marx, and countless contributions across decades and many different countries and revolutionary situations to build a scientific consensus which can be applied to a given situation. Theres no royal road to science, you need to read actual Marxist-Leninist analysis, so stop fucking around.

The theory of TNC does not engage with Leninist theory, but rejects it out of hand, ignoring the historical role of imperialism and colonization in capitalism, as well as the fact that Marxist-Leninists have developed an empirically-sound model for understanding imperialism already (and used it to great effect), as Christian Fuchs points out in Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies:



impressionistic, abstract, and imprecise definitions are of no help to Marxists. that there is little consensus on this is indicative of the failures of these theories of imperialism



this definition holds true, despite the rise of an imperial bloc



This theory, despite the continued development of imperialism, still applies today. As Marx has outlined a theory of capitalism as a dynamic, changing system, which nonetheless operates along laws of motion characteristic of it, so did Lenin and other theorists develop a theory of imperialism under capitalism which is governed by certain laws of motion. Though imperialism has certainly changed, these characteristic remain in place, the reason being that they are soundly rooted in the real, material world of production.

#603
Post rating: ~
Thanks Urbandale and Crow for the education

I was curious about this bc I just read The Company Store (thx whoever recommended it in the book thread) and was a bit surprised by all the neoliberalism in 1909 Cape Breton. I'm a baby that hasn't read Lenin
#604
Mike Nelson here.
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that guy's arguments are bad. cheer's
#605
Post rating: ~

quavers posted:

I'm a baby that hasn't read Lenin



same but not only that, i've never had anyone to discuss him with

#606
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +
Read Lenin before you read other left stuff tbh. He's a very easy read and individual works are quite short. Most every leftist author trying to write theory either builds off him or rejects him, and either way you don't build a house without some cornerstones
#607
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +++++

Urbandale posted:

Read Lenin before you read other left stuff tbh. He's a very easy read and individual works are quite short. Most every leftist author trying to write theory either builds off him or rejects him, and either way you don't build a house without some cornerstones

Unless you're building a houseboat. Anarcho-syndicalism has beaten you again, liberal.

#608
Post rating: +
you mean like a houseboat for a... swamp? DO YOU LIVE IN A SWAMP?!
#609
UNUSUALY COOL
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methlabretriever posted:

i know, that's an old article. they just started bombing isis` oil infrastructure recently



no. that started months ago, and i remember because i posted a comparison here of the top headlines that day from CNN (obama hits ISIS "in the pocketbook"), Fox News (not-obama hits ISIS "in the pocketbook"), and MSNBC (wayward failson shoots wal-mart in the customers)

the idea that ISIS even has an infrastructure is propaganda anyway: it belongs to the Syrian state & washington knows it & is complaining because russia doesn't want to wreck syria

Edited by cars ()

#610
Online
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aerdil posted:

you mean like a houseboat for a... swamp? DO YOU LIVE IN A SWAMP?!

is sawampman grover??

#611
Post rating: ~

ilmdge posted:

aerdil posted:

you mean like a houseboat for a... swamp? DO YOU LIVE IN A SWAMP?!

is sawampman grover??



... that's something i didn't consider before.. but now his refusal to answer the question is beginning to make sense.. hoolllyy shit./

#612
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"Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind". The experiment runs as follows:

Suppose Davidson goes hiking in the swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt. At the same time, nearby in the swamp another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules such that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death.

This being, whom Davidson terms "Swampman," has, of course, a brain which is structurally identical to that which Davidson had, and will thus, presumably, behave exactly as Davidson would have. He will walk out of the swamp, return to Davidson's office at Berkeley, and write the same essays he would have written; he will interact like an amicable person with all of Davidson's friends and family, and so forth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampman

#613
Post rating: +
That's not a thought experiment that's the plot of the Alan Moore 80s swamp thing reboot.
#614
Post rating: +
analytic philosophy of mind is overrun by the absolute worst kind of nerds, and if communism hadn't saved me i probably would have become one of them.
#615
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Crow posted:

as Christian Fuchs points out in Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies:


i had no idea media studies was so fraught with interpreting lenin

#616
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
someone i know who studies theories of imperialism as like their full time job told me about something the tankies might be interested in, i'm not sure if you know it, but gindin and panitch have a recent book called "the making of global capitalism" which also focuses largely on financial domination via american empire.
#617
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

analytic philosophy of mind is overrun by the absolute worst kind of nerds



*Thug Lessons reenters forum atmosphere at 30,000 feet per second*

#618
Post rating: +
that book sucks read geopolitical economy by radhika desai instead
#619
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

WildStalins posted:

that book sucks read geopolitical economy by radhika desai instead

i think they have very similar viewpoints actually (if you mean desai and panitch).

#620
Mike Nelson here.
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all of those people are trotskyists also... and i believe desai's work is explicitly centered on trotskyist ideas. smdh
#621
Post rating: +

HenryKrinkle posted:



i logged out of twitter to check out what anarchist dad has been up to (since he has me blocked of course), and it's just a thousand tweets where he's whining about how he had to block the twitter account of libcom because some of the posters on the forums criticized him and the admins "didn't do anything about it" lmao

#622
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: ~
Jacobin and libcom are both massive wastes of time, I dunno why people still engage with them.

Never mind it's because they aren't spending that time organizing, just like Bapa Anarchy
#623
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

Urbandale posted:

Jacobin and libcom are both massive wastes of time, I dunno why people still engage with them.

Never mind it's because they aren't spending that time organizing, just like Bapa Anarchy

#624
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getfiscal posted:

someone i know who studies theories of imperialism as like their full time job told me about something the tankies might be interested in, i'm not sure if you know it, but gindin and panitch have a recent book called "the making of global capitalism" which also focuses largely on financial domination via american empire.



i tried reading it a while ago and found it pretty dull. i think the main argument is basically the same as in varoufakis' global minotaur, and probably a dozen other books. it's the same stuff that gets repeated over and over in international political economy courses.

#625
Mike Nelson here.
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yeah it sounds terrible, but some of the people here think china is socialist so who knows what they'll like
#626
[account deactivated]
#627
Kurdt
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#628
Post rating: ~
#629
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babyfinland posted:

there are some truly bad people on this forum and the environment is about as toxic as you can get but some people i like and want to keep in contact but they refuse to go to twitter.com and enjoy my brand there so here i be



Thug Lessons take your ego trip to here, your whole "this place is toxic and for mentally ill people" thing was old two years ago. Interesting though that since the actual toxic people like yourself left this place is 100 times better. I revived this thread to see if you were willing to modify your opinions about Syria two years later when they look even more ridiculous.

#630
Post rating: +
Funny that baby Finland posting now on twitter is indistinguishable from when mustang took over his account here.

Could there be a link between mental issues and Trotskyism, or is that a cop out?
When I see 'smart' supposed leftists celebrating alqaida and nazi death squads in Syria and Ukraine and murders of Latin American community and union organisers it makes me wonder what's happening inside their heads
#631
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
Baby Finland is great. Go suck eggs!
#632
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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i think all the toxic people melted down off the forum. come back BF
#633
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A bunch of the known toxics became crazy or started the conec zone but the cars/swampman regimes have been reasonably successful in recruiting new toxics who, helpfully, also aren't funny.
#634
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imo this new batch of quirky anime / twitter ppl who just cant get enough Theory has promise
#635
UNUSUALY COOL
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fyi i have never approved a new account request because i dont know how & im lazy
#636
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: ~
same. i was told i could approve people, then that i was a mod, and i never once saw any new control panels or anything *shrug*
#637
Post rating: ~


hmm i dunno if this video is embeddeding ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhFjWt3mkY8

Edited by xipe ()

#638
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just put hhFjWt3mkY8 between the youtube tags mate.
#639
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

Spatial_Reasoning posted:

Its been my pet theory that ISIS is mostly a recontextualization of militants as a traditional west phallian state, that can be eventually made peace with.

I'll check back in in 17 mo.



rip

#640
lies half the time
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is it tru there is a conec zone? can ne1 post there