babyhueypnewton posted:I framed my MA thesis around that quote so yeah, you got me. Anyway, I've been reading "The Long 20th Century", it's ok. The whole purpose of the book is to hype Japan as the new hegemon which didn't age well but the historical information is good and the framework is solid since he orients it around rates of profit. In fact, the framework is so solid that when you read the intro it's obvious he's accidentally describing China today, which makes the nonsensical "Adam Smith in Beijing" even weirder, like he forgot his own book.
Western communists need to read more sweeping longee duree works of Marxism and far less "people's history" since we're already conditioned by petty-bourgeois ideology to look for humanism and spontaneity through willpower. If existentialism was an attempt to come to terms with the entrance of the mass of humanity into history and therefore represents a moment when first world humanism and third world scientific socialism coexisted in contradiction and the new form of imperialism that resolved it had not yet come into being, we've basically gone backwards and today's Marxist humanism is far more racist and imperialistic than Sartre, let alone the Thorez era PCF. Scientific works of this kind were the main target of the postmodernist counter-revolution and are now forbidden so Anderson, Arigghi, Wallenstein and co. are still the only option.
E: it's inferior to Anderson's two works of historical materialism but since he never wrote a history of capitalism and Hobsbawm's work is not very interesting, it's the best I know of.
how bad is arrighi's book on china? also speaking of anderson, what do you think of ellen meiksins wood's "the origins of capitalism"? that shit reads like an attempt to refute anderson's book on absolutism more than anything else lol
there is a herb which is called Saturnus de Canalibus, of which such medicine is made
alchemists know what the fuck is up
Anti communist journalist Anne Applebaum is dazed and confused after finding all her Polish anti communist friends from the 90s turn out to be fascists.
tears posted:just got done with reading Rosarium Philosophorum, 1550 and well, right there in the conclusion on the second to last page
there is a herb which is called Saturnus de Canalibus, of which such medicine is made
alchemists know what the fuck is up
i only took a tiny little bit of that shit but it made me as young as an eagle
spoiler alert: they're american
babyhueypnewton posted:I framed my MA thesis around that quote so yeah, you got me. Anyway, I've been reading "The Long 20th Century", it's ok. The whole purpose of the book is to hype Japan as the new hegemon which didn't age well but the historical information is good and the framework is solid since he orients it around rates of profit. In fact, the framework is so solid that when you read the intro it's obvious he's accidentally describing China today, which makes the nonsensical "Adam Smith in Beijing" even weirder, like he forgot his own book.
Western communists need to read more sweeping longee duree works of Marxism and far less "people's history" since we're already conditioned by petty-bourgeois ideology to look for humanism and spontaneity through willpower. If existentialism was an attempt to come to terms with the entrance of the mass of humanity into history and therefore represents a moment when first world humanism and third world scientific socialism coexisted in contradiction and the new form of imperialism that resolved it had not yet come into being, we've basically gone backwards and today's Marxist humanism is far more racist and imperialistic than Sartre, let alone the Thorez era PCF. Scientific works of this kind were the main target of the postmodernist counter-revolution and are now forbidden so Anderson, Arigghi, Wallenstein and co. are still the only option.
E: it's inferior to Anderson's two works of historical materialism but since he never wrote a history of capitalism and Hobsbawm's work is not very interesting, it's the best I know of.
I just started Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Vol 1 after having just read althusser’s essay on humanism and obviously having read Anderson’s books and the introduction is making me roll my eyes. Hopefully it’s contained to the intro but it’s sounding like A People’s History of South Korea with him talking about how uprisings are some sort of decentralized movement based on love or whatever and that 1989 in east Europe was a continuation of 1968 in West europe, I keep gagging. At least he isn’t constantly shitting on North Korea
Caesura109 posted:Halfway through his class I unregistered from the course and now will be switching majors.
Just so you know you dont need to do a humanities major to do marxism, imo its probably not much more difficult to actually educate yourself as a marxist in a stem field than in a humanities field since valuable marxist texts are probably going to be things you need to read on your own anyway
c_man posted:Caesura109 posted:Halfway through his class I unregistered from the course and now will be switching majors.
Just so you know you dont need to do a humanities major to do marxism, imo its probably not much more difficult to actually educate yourself as a marxist in a stem field than in a humanities field since valuable marxist texts are probably going to be things you need to read on your own anyway
and for those who require it, heres some old dead guy with a beard to back us up
"From a Speech at the sevent congress of the all-union leninist young communist league, march 11, 1926", In: On Communist Education. Selected Speeches and Articles, M. I. Kalinin 1926-1945
what Crusoe established was not a market economy such as emerged in England but a plantation and settler economy such as was used by capitalism in the non-European world. It might therefore be called the story of primitive underdevelopment.
The mythical Robinson is pictured as a self-sufficient individual, but much of the actual story, even after he is shipwrecked, shows him as a dependent man belonging to a larger whole and always relying on help and cooperation from others. The social nature of production turns out to be the real message of his story as we shall see again and again. There is no real paradox in this. To capitalism belong both the production of the most highly developed social relations in history and the production of the solitary individual.
The isolation is more intense in Robinson’s mind than in his actual situation. For what comes out clearly, in encounter after encounter, is that whenever Robinson has to face another person he reacts with fear and suspicion. His isolation, in short, is no more nor less than the alienation of possessive individualism, repeated a million times in capitalist society, and in our days symbolized by the private civil-defense shelter protected from neighbors by a machine gun.
Items Taken by Robinson Crusoe From the Shipwreck:-
Defense: ammunition, arms, powder, two barrels musket bullets, five to seven muskets, large bag full of small shot
Food: biscuits, rum, bread, rice, cheese, goat flesh, corn, liquor, flour, cordials, sweetmeats, poultry feed, wheat and rice seed
Clothing: men’s clothes, handkerchiefs, colored neckties, two pairs of shoes
Furniture and Miscellaneous: hammock, bedding, pens, ink, paper, three or four compasses, some mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, charts, books on navigation, three Bibles
Tools: carpenter’s chest, 203 bags full of nails and spikes, a great screwjack, one or two dozen hatchets, grindstone, two saws, axe, hammer, two or three iron crows, two or three razors, one large scissors, fire shovel and tongs, two brass kettles, copper pots, gridiron
Raw materials: rigging, sails for canvas, small ropes, ropes and wire, ironwork, timber, boards, planks, two or three hundredweight of iron, one hundredweight of sheet lead
Animals: dog, two cats
Things he misses badly: ink, spade, shovel, needles, pins, thread, smoking pipe
Law makes criminals and criminals make settlers.
Caesura109 posted:there are zero stem subjects im not totally terrible at though, except maybe biology
hello friend, its possible for anyone to be good at anything if they have the time and the effort and the enthusiasm; and afaik students still have a lot of time to study, which you can dramatically increese by not attending any lectures
Caesura109 posted:Just so you know you dont need to do a humanities major to do marxism, imo its probably not much more difficult to actually educate yourself as a marxist in a stem field than in a humanities field since valuable marxist texts are probably going to be things you need to read on your own anyway
there are zero stem subjects im not totally terrible at though, except maybe biology
I said this in the math thread but practice and using the assistance resources available to you at a decent uni can do a lot for you. I was pretty average at math until i put in a bunch of time, and a good friend of mine went from a journalism major to a math major, and it was also a matter of practice in his case. Also biology owns.
sovnarkoman posted:babyhueypnewton posted:I framed my MA thesis around that quote so yeah, you got me. Anyway, I've been reading "The Long 20th Century", it's ok. The whole purpose of the book is to hype Japan as the new hegemon which didn't age well but the historical information is good and the framework is solid since he orients it around rates of profit. In fact, the framework is so solid that when you read the intro it's obvious he's accidentally describing China today, which makes the nonsensical "Adam Smith in Beijing" even weirder, like he forgot his own book.
Western communists need to read more sweeping longee duree works of Marxism and far less "people's history" since we're already conditioned by petty-bourgeois ideology to look for humanism and spontaneity through willpower. If existentialism was an attempt to come to terms with the entrance of the mass of humanity into history and therefore represents a moment when first world humanism and third world scientific socialism coexisted in contradiction and the new form of imperialism that resolved it had not yet come into being, we've basically gone backwards and today's Marxist humanism is far more racist and imperialistic than Sartre, let alone the Thorez era PCF. Scientific works of this kind were the main target of the postmodernist counter-revolution and are now forbidden so Anderson, Arigghi, Wallenstein and co. are still the only option.
E: it's inferior to Anderson's two works of historical materialism but since he never wrote a history of capitalism and Hobsbawm's work is not very interesting, it's the best I know of.how bad is arrighi's book on china? also speaking of anderson, what do you think of ellen meiksins wood's "the origins of capitalism"? that shit reads like an attempt to refute anderson's book on absolutism more than anything else lol
It's just weird. Like it makes a very particular argument about Adam Smith and then tries to come up with some more general concept of classical political economy (with Marx implied to be part of it rather than a critique of it) which can be applied to the neither socialist nor capitalist (according to Samir Amin and others of that school) to understand it. Your life will be no different having read it except perhaps you can better fuck with people who claim Adam Smith as a free market advocate. But then again, who even reads Adam Smith anymore? Definitely not the libertarians who claim him.
As for Wood's book, I haven't read it, but I have read Brenner and EP Thompson as well as Vivek Chibber's political Marxism for dummies in his book on postcolonialism. I find it to be nonsense since it isn't really science at all, just a series of observations with the purpose of either going against theorization as such or making a vague humanistic theory of class struggle as contingent and driven by will. But it would take a lot of effort to actually talk about how they treat history so I'll leave it at a personal opinion.
babyhueypnewton posted:But then again, who even reads Adam Smith anymore?
babyhueypnewton posted:As for Wood's book, I haven't read it, but I have read Brenner and EP Thompson as well as Vivek Chibber's political Marxism for dummies in his book on postcolonialism. I find it to be nonsense since it isn't really science at all, just a series of observations with the purpose of either going against theorization as such or making a vague humanistic theory of class struggle as contingent and driven by will. But it would take a lot of effort to actually talk about how they treat history so I'll leave it at a personal opinion.
I want to know what you think about the Vivek Chibber. You could write a front page article and dedicate it to the memory of tpaine.
Caesura109 posted:Does anyone know how to bypass the Financial Times paywall? Or are there better free sources on financial news?
http://bugmenot.com/view/ft.com <- the current top login/password worked fine for me when i tried it just now
shriekingviolet posted:a lot of paywalled news sites are so simple you can just... stop loading the page once the text is loaded. fin.
the Post wouldn't let me scroll but while they were partying, I studied Select All
pescalune posted:Reading Machievelli's Prince so I can read Althusser thoughts on Machiavelli. One of those things where the content has so thoroughly been absorbed into popular discourse and culture that it barely feels worth reading honestly. Ive heard the Discourses are a little more interesting at least
A professor in college had us read prince and their whole interpreation was "the author cant be serious. the whole book is written ironically" and i was like wow thats cool, that's why you're the smart ass professor with the tenure, and then later i was like oh.... that's their interpretation of every book, and that's why they're the smart ass professor with the tenure
swampman posted:A professor in college had us read prince and their whole interpreation was "the author cant be serious. the whole book is written ironically" and i was like wow thats cool, that's why you're the smart ass professor with the tenure, and then later i was like oh.... that's their interpretation of every book, and that's why they're the smart ass professor with the tenure
In the case of The Prince, it's one of the dominant interpretations of the text in academia. I agree that it's a stupid one
