#16921
Post rating: ~
a portal suddenly opens behind Einstein, as he turns in astonishment a head pokes through and says

tears posted:

soon i will know all the physics


#16922
Post rating: +
reading Napoleon: A Life and it's surprising how accurately he predicted his own battlefield/world-historical grandiosity in his mid-20s even though, like, he was still getting surprised women talked to him.
#16923
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
confirmation bias
#16924
Post rating: +

tears posted:

"shadows of forgotten ancestors"


verdict: 3.5 out of 5 hammer and sickles,

now reading sagan and druyan's "Comet" all about comets, and all the other books

#16925
Post rating: ~
wallerstein died, rip

reading the new z. cope, its good
#16926
Post rating: ~
is he retreading the same stuff from his previous book?
#16927
Post rating: ~
its def p. much in the same line as dwdc but it seems more condensed and with different accents in that it argues strongly and more explicitly against hegemonic global north left stances, for the existence of global value transfers, core\periphery wage differentials, superexploitation etc and its necessity in capitalism-imperialism. a bunch of good sources, calculations formulas etc (i just read the first 6 chapters so far though)
#16928
Post rating: +
RIP Wallerstein

I discovered that apparently Robert Owen was the first one to use Southern cotton in an English spinning mill, at the time people were using French cotton. A little irony of socialist history that this forum will appreciate, like how the Péreire brothers, followers of Saint Simon, invented using bank loans derived from small savings to finance projects which required a large outlay of constant capital and thereby convert small capital into big capital
#16929
Post rating: ~
Caliban and the Witch, whenever i hear the term "heretic" now i get a little excited
#16930
Post rating: ~
I'm taking a class in the anthropology department about the people and cultures of China, so I'm reading "A Daughter of Han" right now.
#16931
[account deactivated]
#16932
[account deactivated]
#16933
Post rating: ~
Reading the minutes of the second Congress of the RSDLP, in which the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks split. Holy boring rules lawyering
#16934
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
I’m re-reading Robinson’s A Theory of Global Capitalism and a lot of stuff in it that used to seem insightful to me looks naive in hindsight... while I think recent elections in much of the West and East alike show a stark split between globally-focused and nationally-focused bourgeoisie, I just don’t buy the concept of a transnational capitalist class anymore. It seems of a piece with the liberal “end of history”, a sort of gloomy reflection of a false faith in the stability of international trade and finance.

In a way, I wonder that I was ever so pessimistic.
#16935
Post rating: ~

cars posted:

I’m re-reading Robinson’s A Theory of Global Capitalism and a lot of stuff in it that used to seem insightful to me looks naive in hindsight... while I think recent elections in much of the West and East alike show a stark split between globally-focused and nationally-focused bourgeoisie, I just don’t buy the concept of a transnational capitalist class anymore. It seems of a piece with the liberal “end of history”, a sort of gloomy reflection of a false faith in the stability of international trade and finance.

In a way, I wonder that I was ever so pessimistic.



It's ultra-imperialism. There's not enough profits to go around for that to happen

#16936
Post rating: ~
Conclusion after reading One Step Forward, Two Steps Back having read the Congress minutes: Martov is a fucking lying piece of shit, but he's a lying piece of shit not because he's a bad person, but because that's what opportunism is as Lenin points out, in a way especially clear to me, vis-a-vis his relationship with the Bund, Yuznhy Rabochy and Rabocheye Deelo. But it's almost baffling for me to watch Martov go downhill so fast; it reminds me of Kautsky.
#16937
Post rating: ~

cars posted:

I’m re-reading Robinson’s A Theory of Global Capitalism and a lot of stuff in it that used to seem insightful to me looks naive in hindsight... while I think recent elections in much of the West and East alike show a stark split between globally-focused and nationally-focused bourgeoisie, I just don’t buy the concept of a transnational capitalist class anymore. It seems of a piece with the liberal “end of history”, a sort of gloomy reflection of a false faith in the stability of international trade and finance.

In a way, I wonder that I was ever so pessimistic.


Phrasing it as global is almost wrong too, because it's more like competing superblocs. Angela Merkel said that the United States was an enemy that Europe needed to fight against as if it were Russia and China a few months ago, for example.

#16938
Post rating: ~
accidentally hit the "back" button. rookie mistake.

Edited by serafiym ()

#16939
Post rating: ~
#16940
Online
Post rating: +++++
im continuing through "Molotov Remembers" apace... it's pretty easy reading, my wife got it for me. shes not as into politics but likes that im communist... tells a lot of her friends and acquaintances about it and enjoys their reaactions. I guess im sort of a badboy. Well we all knew that.

Also got "Needful Things" by Stephen King which i will begin in october to get in the season
#16941
Post rating: +
i read "rings of saturn" by weegee sebald and "beloved" by toni morrison and now im reading "liberalism: a counter history" by domenico losurdo
#16942
Post rating: +
Chuang 1 and 2 *dons flame shield*
#16943
Post rating: ~
some science minded people ought to conduct a study about how healthy and good it is for your brain to read lenin
#16944
Post rating: ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXEYZ_GlYOQ
#16945
lies half the time
Post rating: +

dimashq posted:

some science minded people ought to conduct a study about how healthy and good it is for your brain to read lenin



my cousin was in this study, im p sure they were given the placebo lenin texts tho

#16946
Post rating: ~
i was reading a dissertation on germanic pagan mythology and i learned that these ancient peoples believed a king's "Good Vibes" determined the health of the village.
#16947
Post rating: ~

ialdabaoth posted:

dimashq posted:

some science minded people ought to conduct a study about how healthy and good it is for your brain to read lenin

my cousin was in this study, im p sure they were given the placebo lenin texts tho



*slips in a version of Our Revolution by Lenin Sanders* "wow imperialism is good actually, thanks Lenin"

#16948
Post rating: +
i've been reading parenting books since I'm gonna be a dad or whatever
#16949
[account deactivated]
#16950
Post rating: +
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder by parenting expert V. Lenin
#16951
Post rating: +

Lysenko posted:

i've been reading parenting books since I'm gonna be a dad or whatever



Misread, thought you were reading Parenti books to prepare for fathering

#16952
Post rating: +++++
I've been reading Engels' The Origin of the Family so that I can figure out where babies come from, but no luck so far
#16953
Post rating: ~

shriekingviolet posted:

“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorderby parenting expert V. Lenin



if there was a leftcom Freud case study, what would his nickname be?

#16954
Post rating: +
i read john smith imperialism, which is an extremely interesting and generally excellent book with some great graphs and tables and among other things really cutting into the backwardness of euromarxists

with a slightly bitter aftertaste because that guy just cant shake off his pro cuban post trotskyism (?) with absurd complaints about " stalinism (especially its maoist varieties)" of dependency theorists, later on in the book praying for a "revolutionary marxism leninism that unlike its perverse Stalinist iteration actually deserves its name". would still recommend it though
#16955
Post rating: +
The good Marxist political economists all have weird politics and the good politics Marxists are usually bad political economists, but the WWP/PSL came from the SWP so what can ya do
#16956
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
who wants to be renamed PerverseStalinistIteration
#16957
Post rating: ~
ye
#16958
Post rating: +
having weird political views is how eggheads make it big with book deals these days if they're not born into the lizard caste.
#16959
[account deactivated]
#16960
Post rating: ~
Reading the Transformation of the world a global history of the nineteenth century. Reading about coolies.