#13361
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i read "endless forms most beautiful" which was cool because it gave some neat examples of how developmental biology links genetics and evolutionary bio but because its a popsci book its written for business execs to read on airplanes
#13362
Post rating: +
my capital vol 3 reading group is gonna start soon and if we keep up with our schedule we should be finished by like july
#13363
Marxsplainer
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good luck! how often are y'all going to meet?
#13364
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weekly, starting out around 30 pages per week and then closer to 70 once the semester ends
#13365
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im trying capital vol 2 again
#13366
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ive been going through vol 2 & 3 myself lately, following the david harvey class on youtube which is really the only way i can focus enough to read it all
#13367
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ts weird, i feel like im the only person ive spoken to who doesnt find the harvey stuff that interesting or helpful. i felt like volume 2 especially was almost repetitive on its own
#13368
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maybe im missing out on a whole bunch!!
#13369
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i worry more about leaning too heavily on harvey in that im missing stuff in the texts that he doesn't highlight or w/e.
#13370
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ive found that most of the stuff i end up highlighting on my read-through he brings up in the lecture so i feel at least a little validated. but i mainly find it useful to have some commentary contextualizing it in more contemporary debates about this or that in marxian economics that i'm not aware of.
#13371
[account deactivated]
#13372
chickeon
Post rating: ~
Vol 2 is where the Harv really shines imo
#13373
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tpaine posted:

i'm on capital volume 8



it stopped being funny by volume 5, i think marx ran out of ideas. and the grundrisse spinoff thing was awful.

#13374
mt.real
Post rating: +
every so often i boot up harv & crack open Capital again and i just can't stay with it, i am usually totally zoned out after work. i had a nice night yesterday tho and finally dug into a few chapters of Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles (2002), which is just like taking a class in Neocon Historiography 201. it seems to be a bit of a bible in the right (wrong) hyper-elite circles. i'm actually very interested because what i understand of his theory is that he does a bunch of complicated thinking and then essentially comes to the conclusion that capital rules everything now, & history is essentially been a dialectical process between self-legitimation & violence, but without using any of those words. i want to see how he gets there.

i am making notes as i go about what i actually think about it (since just straight up reading it w/o criticism is impossible) & if i get brave i might make it into a frontpageable post. tho at this rate it'll take me all year.

my mind kind of clicked off when he started telling his version of the history of the ussr 1910-1940 though. i am pretty sure every single sentence of it has been directly contradicted by a cited post on this very forum, and of course his version had like, idk, two cites, and nothing for sentences that basically boiled down to "this was only possible through brutal violence and manipulation!!" he presents the 20th century as violent fascism vs violent communism vs the reluctant noble hero "liberal parliamentarianism". holy disingenuous batman.

i wish my brain wasn't mush so often. idk what to do about that. i guess i'll keep staring at my glowing information machine, that will help
#13375
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RedMaistre posted:

Reading The Hapsburg Monarchy 1867-1914 by Arthur J. May. An older study, but it successfully avoids the hoary cliche that that the multi-ethnic empire was doomed because of endogenous tribal strife among the rival nationalities.



are there any histories of the ottoman empire you would recommend?

#13376
Post rating: +
I'm reading a survey of Cuban history for a college class. It's called Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution by Louis Perez Jr. It covers the history of the island from about 1492 to 2013.

I just got up to a chapter that covers the 1920s through the 1930s. The economic policy at the time was basically to use capital accumulated by the sugar industry to subsidize and develop other local industries and thus rid the island of its colonial monocrop economy. Of course, the Great Depression hit and that meant the price of sugar fell through which means it took down every other economic sector with it.

This is obviously reminiscent of what's happening in Venezuela after the price of oil has fallen through. It's depressing because here we are about a century in the future and the global south is still facing the same sorts of problems it did 100 years ago.

#13377
Post rating: +

drwhat posted:



I have Bobbitt's Terror and Consent . I bought it years ago and never read it. We should do a r H i z z o n E reading group on some neo-Con and give this forum a chance to tear up some elite-tier ideological bullshit.

On a related note, I sense a Hannah Arendt debunking mega thread coming up this summer. BHPN, RM and Laika all had some pretty interesting things to say about her. I want to get some people to critique her tome on Totalitarianism because it would be pedantic and fun.

#13378
[account deactivated]
#13379
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +

walkinginonit posted:

drwhat posted:

I have Bobbitt's Terror and Consent . I bought it years ago and never read it. We should do a r H i z z o n E reading group on some neo-Con and give this forum a chance to tear up some elite-tier ideological bullshit.

On a related note, I sense a Hannah Arendt debunking mega thread coming up this summer. BHPN, RM and Laika all had some pretty interesting things to say about her. I want to get some people to critique her tome on Totalitarianism because it would be pedantic and fun.



do it and frontpage just so i can send it to corey robin and watch him cry

#13380
Post rating: ~

WildStalins posted:

RedMaistre posted:

Reading The Hapsburg Monarchy 1867-1914 by Arthur J. May. An older study, but it successfully avoids the hoary cliche that that the multi-ethnic empire was doomed because of endogenous tribal strife among the rival nationalities.

are there any histories of the ottoman empire you would recommend?



i like this http://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1836&context=theses

#13381
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

WildStalins posted:

RedMaistre posted:

Reading The Hapsburg Monarchy 1867-1914 by Arthur J. May. An older study, but it successfully avoids the hoary cliche that that the multi-ethnic empire was doomed because of endogenous tribal strife among the rival nationalities.

are there any histories of the ottoman empire you would recommend?



i hear a pair of thunderingly tyrannosaurus size footsteps heading over here from banned twitter

#13382
Post rating: +
our capital 3: with a vengeance reading group has a prof from a nearby university who's rereading the book and boy does this own
#13383
Marxsplainer
Post rating: ~

c_man posted:

our capital 3: with a vengeance reading group has a prof from a nearby university who's rereading the book and boy does this own



are they a smart person or do they have some personal academic axe to grind? i could see that really kicking ass though, between them and harvey you could get some good analysis going

#13384
Post rating: +
their politics seem pretty on point, at least compared to the fairly liberal fare around here. im pretty happy about it
#13385
Online
Post rating: +
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/09/help_us_jon_stewart_youre_our_only_hope_to_defeat_donald_trump/ hahahahahah Restore Our Sanity please Jon you're our only hope

also i'm finally getting close to the end of J R
#13386
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ilmdge posted:

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/09/help_us_jon_stewart_youre_our_only_hope_to_defeat_donald_trump/hahahahahah Restore Our Sanity please Jon you're our only hope

also i'm finally getting close to the end of J R



remember when the rally to restore sanity and the coffee party dealt crushing blows to the momentum of the tea party?

#13387
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ilmdge posted:

also i'm finally getting close to the end of J R


hell yeah!!!!!!!!

#13388
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i'm reading moby dick. it's very good and hilarious. melville is cool.
#13389
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Dick is for children. Budd is where it's at.
#13390
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I'm reading Virginia Woolf's Orlando which is really good
#13391
chickeon
Post rating: +

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Dick is for children

mods

#13392
Post rating: +
I am reading Shenfan: the sequel to Fanshen. It's extremely good and cool.
#13393
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does anybody here know the source of Mao's "women hold up half the sky"? can't seem to find a particular source. might be an apocryphal type thing? any other stuff mao said about women/feminism would also be good.
#13394
[account deactivated]
#13395
Post rating: +

In order to build a great socialist society, it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.



Unite and take part in production and political activity to improve the economic and political status of women.



A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of authority (political authority, clan authority and religious authority) ... As for women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also dominated by the men. These for authorities - political, clan, religious, and masculine - are the embodiment of the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system, and are the four thick ropes binding the Chinese people, particularly the peasants ... With the rise of the peasant movement, the women in many places have now begun to organize rural women's associations; the opportunity has come for them to lift up their heads, and the authority of the husband is getting shakier every day. In a word, the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system is tottering with the growth of the peasants' power.

#13396
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i also found my little red book
#13397
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OH yeah i didnt even think about checking that. mostly just looking for the source of 'women hold up half the sky', if there is one.
#13398
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I couldn't find my lil' red book for months so now I have to cram it in wherever possible.

'Women hold up half the sky' was possibly said by Mao in the late 60s a few years after publication of the red book (hence no specific speech or event to tie it to.) The earliest known source that I can find searching in english seems to be from this 1975 poster: http://i.imgur.com/2YLKOAo.jpg

While the original context of the quote seems to have been lost to us (at least as far as I can find searching in english,) it is uncontested that the quote does at least originate from the PRC, if not Mao himself.

Interestingly, the quote is very frequently slung about as an "ancient chinese proverb" in liberal texts, most humorously in a goldman sachs propaganda piece. Or it gets neutered of context and transformed into a bland neutral platitude with preludes like "it has been said..."

If someone is trying to deny that the quote came from the communist party of China, then they're full of rancid revisionist history dogshit.
#13399
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I walked past some NGO poster in a mall the other day and did a double take when I saw that slogan on there. Our elites priming us for when they finalize our sale to communist China?
#13400
Post rating: +
Im pretty sure its in a speech ive read and is part of a bigger thing but i cant recall right now - ill try and figure out ...

Edit: ya i was thinking of another one of those mao quotes you read as a quick quote that i read un a speech recently and was like "oh thats where thats from"

But as for the chinese proverb thing: iirc to hold up the sky in chinese is like to be real hard working and steadfast so he was sort of like referencing a popular chinese idiom, tho not a 'proverb' which is obv racist af

Edited by EmanuelaBrolandi ()