#13801
Post rating: ~
i dunno, im not particularly an anti-althusser partisan but i think thompson makes good points about him ignoring the sites of class struggle and imo the accusations of idealism stick. there's definitely something worth reading there but i think it really needs to be tempered with a better materialist foundation and a stronger sense of history. it just doesn't have to be thompson's and i dont particularly think it should be.
#13802
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
you also have to keep in mind that althusserianism became a fad in england for a few years and very quickly after that it disappeared and many of those people became like third way types and such. so thompson was responding to the fad i think, which was based largely around taking althusserian propositions as profound insights into the structure of the universe or whatever when thompson was like... what's even all that new here... and what does it actually tell us about real history and real everyday struggles. which reflected a strain in english thought that wanted to dig deep into historical struggles to show how flexible political arrangements were, while althusserians tended to imply that there was a sort of rigorous internal logic to the status quo, which fed into the possibility (which was realized) that the movement could collapse into a sort of conservatism. but this was possibly in part because they were trying to import concepts from a debate internal to the french worker's movement which didn't seem sensible to what was actually happening in britain i guess, such that thompson was sort of talking past althusser, who thought he was addressing epistemological questions that were coming to a head in france but were alien to most british people.
#13803
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
many people i know hate althusser because they see it as like peak academic discourse trying to suggest that theorists can determine everything and that the rank and file don't really matter to those debates, and some associate it with people like zizek (who was heavily influenced by althusser), or just french theory in general (which they see as a sort of intellectual fad which gets people away from everyday struggles). i don't really agree i guess, but i mean i've not read most of it yet.
#13804
Post rating: ~
i dont think there's no reason to read althusser or whatever. i think the stuff he writes about the structure of society is interesting and in a loose descriptive sense not totally inaccurate, i just think that thompson is correct in that it doesn't seem to be of any sort of immediate use for understanding class struggle. it's way too clean, the actors in his writing are very disconnected, and his stance towards history and "empiricism" is really weird and wrong. anyway i had only read like the first third of the piece when i was posting this morning. most of the rest of it is a really really tedious invective about stalinism that's much less interesting and well written.
#13805
Post rating: ~
like, the things i like the most from althusser are when he has these really concise descriptions of things like class relations. they're short and get his point across really elegantly but they totally ignore stuff that anyone interested in how class struggle relates to history would care about a whole lot. like if someone took capital vol 1 and cut out all of the stuff about the working day, primitive accumulation, factory inspections etc and focused really hard on making the drier chapters (the stuff about money, cooperation, surplus value, etc) much punchier
#13806
Youth Camp
Post rating: ~
I think Althusserianism only really gets particularly interesting after Althusser. The most interesting class struggle insights to be gained from that tradition are in my opinion from like, Nico Poulantzas. Idk if the 'zzone is familiar with my man but he was a Greek eurocommunist type who's intellectual legacy is basically that he complicated Althusserian problematics.

"Classes in Modern Capitalism" is a particularly great book from him and he basically takes all the althusserian formulations about interpellation and stuff except adds a sort of global bent to it, as well as more nuance. Classes are not only reproduced by themselves, but also by institutions and by the state, new classes which emerge within modern capitalism can be located historically within the context of imperialism (basically a less fatalist and more data heavy "labour aristocracy" view, except he calls them the new petit bourgeoisie) and also analyzes the shifting of social positions as intrinsic to how modern capitalism works.

I'll have to re-read it to get some better thoughts but that I think is where the core value of Althusserianism lies, at least in terms of stuff that actually matters. I guess it might also have something intelligent to say about the nature of science or whatever but im a dumbass and will never touch philosophy of science with a ten foot pole.
#13807
Youth Camp
Post rating: ~
I think Althusserianism only really gets particularly interesting after Althusser. The most interesting class struggle insights to be gained from that tradition are in my opinion from like, Nico Poulantzas. Idk if the 'zzone is familiar with my man but he was a Greek eurocommunist type who's intellectual legacy is basically that he complicated Althusserian problematics.

"Classes in Modern Capitalism" is a particularly great book from him and he basically takes all the althusserian formulations about interpellation and stuff except adds a sort of global bent to it, as well as more nuance. Classes are not only reproduced by themselves, but also by institutions and by the state, new classes which emerge within modern capitalism can be located historically within the context of imperialism (basically a less fatalist and more data heavy "labour aristocracy" view, except he calls them the new petit bourgeoisie) and also analyzes the shifting of social positions as intrinsic to how modern capitalism works.

I'll have to re-read it to get some better thoughts but that I think is where the core value of Althusserianism lies, at least in terms of stuff that actually matters. I guess it might also have something intelligent to say about the nature of science or whatever but im a dumbass and will never touch philosophy of science with a ten foot pole.
#13808
Post rating: +
Althusser is one of the greatest Marxist thinkers and Philosophy of the Encounter is an essential book. He's only second to Marx when it comes to serious scientific rigor in Marxism, and the notion that he was "idealist" or "not materialist" is laughable when the whole point of his "matรฉrialisme alรฉatoire" is rejecting Hegelianism entirely and emphasizing the radical contigency of events.

That book is so fascinating on the limitations of theorizing the state in Marxism and how to overcome it, the state as machine, the fragment on machines, epistemological break, the rejection of Hegel and Feuerbach...

The murder, the mental illness and his ridiculous autobiography made it really easy for academia to dismiss him as an insane French pervert, and just focus on the salacious details instead of all the boring, correct Marxist science.

Also, EP Thompson got shut the fuck down by Perry Anderson lol. I can't judge EP Thompson because I haven't read him beyond the critique, but lots of hardcore Marxist types dismiss him as a sentimental hack who only entry-level British lefties like.

Edited by COINTELBRO ()

#13809
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
I'm reading Mandel's book about eurocommunism. He tends to argue by stating a controversial premise as if it is straightforward fact and then unpacking it a bit. Like instead of building a case against the "Stalinist bureaucracy" or whatever, he just opens with like "In 1924, the counter-revolutionary theory of 'Socialism in One Country' was announced in order to preserve the interests of the emerging bureaucratic stratum." He also tends to argue in terms of consequences of ideas rather than whether they are true, like, Sin1C is bad because it suggests 'national' roads to socialism are the norm rather than world revolution, and showing how that leads to fatalistic ideas etc., without digging too much into the logic behind it.
#13810
Post rating: +
If althusser is so clever why is he dead
#13811
Poronto
Post rating: ~
hes actually alive, in my butt
#13812
Post rating: ~
because ๐Ÿ‘ you ๐Ÿ‘ touch ๐Ÿ‘ yourself ๐Ÿ‘ at ๐Ÿ‘ night
#13813
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

toutvabien posted:

because ๐Ÿ‘ you ๐Ÿ‘ touch ๐Ÿ‘ yourself ๐Ÿ‘ at ๐Ÿ‘ night

What is the significance of this form of "punctuation"? What emotion is conveyed by "clapping" between words - are you singing? Singing is not the most polite behavior.

#13814
Post rating: ~
i dunno how or why it became a thing on twitter, it makes me think of an overzealous camp counselor or something.

also i probably shoulda put a clap in between "your-" and "self" huh
#13815
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
At first I thought it was sign language captioning, but then I thought, surely there are more gestures in sign language and surely most deaf people know how to read. So that put an end to that hypothesis.
#13816
Post rating: ~
the people i see doing it unironically are usually really strident white millenials saying something very self-righteous and annoying
#13817
[account deactivated]
#13818
Poronto
Post rating: ~
i hoped it was about how all future conflicts and disputes between nations will be resolved by one on one tank combat in a walled arena, because that is the only place tanks are useful anymore and because it would be Bad Ass
#13819
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: ~
tanks did a lot of work against novorossiya tho
#13820
[account deactivated]
#13821
Post rating: +
Slavic marauders
#13822
[account deactivated]
#13823
Post rating: +
turn left billy noooooooooo
#13824
Post rating: +
yeah william blum sent an e-mail out a little over year ago saying he had health problems and he was going to basically retire from writing dispatches/sending e-mails. then a few months later he started writing e-mails again and they all contain islamophobic shit like that. it's pretty sad watching his mental decline
#13825
[account deactivated]
#13826
Post rating: +
http://abcnews.go.com/International/28-pages-questions-alleged-saudi-spy-cia/story?id=40697425

Tldr: former counterterrorism tsar richard clarke posits man mentioned in freshly declassified "28 pages" was saudi spy infiltrating al qaeda on us soil on behalf of cia. Just, wow
#13827
[account deactivated]
#13828
Post rating: ~
I will never forget the day our state broadcaster accused china of stealing the blueprints of our new spy headquarters. Lmfao http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-27/asio-blueprints-stolen-in-major-hacking-operation/4715960
#13829
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +

roseweird posted:

there's a guy at my job who starts ranting about chinese ip theft at the slightest provocation, i'm not sure this propaganda sinks in too deep outside of the libertarian-leaning sysadmin set but it's remarkable how the narrative affects people with only the most indirect material interest in the integrity of western ip.



people dont talk about this a lot but the US military has become stuffed with officers who got degrees in econ and seem to be common midlevel cadre for this set. it gets everywhere - security types from major defense installations to local bases are blaming all penetration attempts with a couple ranges of chinese IPs on the chinese government. its absurd but it attracts huge budgets, and with eric schmidt being very high profile with the us intelligence and defense industries i think we can expect this trend to accelerate

#13830
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
as Crow pointed out many of them have likely been semi-forced to skim excerpts from things like frantz fanon and so on in their lame educations
#13831
Post rating: +
reminder that the US govt officially blamed DPRK for the sony hack and actually imposed some kind of sanctions in response
#13832
[account deactivated]
#13833
[account deactivated]
#13834
[account deactivated]
#13835
[account deactivated]
#13836
[account deactivated]
#13837
Post rating: ~
it was this article afaik http://qz.com/527570/the-real-story-behind-chinas-alleged-conquest-for-african-farmland/

which has been sitting in one of my browser tabs because i swear i'll get around to reading it
#13838
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
Went to some bookstores in Chicago and got a good haul:



#13839
Post rating: ~
I've read some of those books.
#13840
Post rating: +
Never mind I just glanced real quick and thought those were all maxim magazine at first.