trakfactri posted:encountered a rare leftcom in the wild. he sent me his exegesis and wanted me to read it. goes on about wanting to take over the DSA and turn it into a campus-based "youth vanguard" along the lines of "organic centralism." refers to himself as a "radical zoomer."
the difference between an anarchist and a leftcom in the West is that leftcoms spend their time working on pseudo-grad-school shit like that instead of jumping into dumpsters for cakes. both are put-ons for things their petty-booj money could buy them easy but go with the smashed vegan garbage cake imo.
babyhueypnewton posted:Reading the terms of the Dengist critique of the cultural revolution applied to the Great Purge and Stalin's "excesses" has caused me to feel disgusted
....they've been doing it for like the last 30 years have you only just noticed
c_man posted:Still reading "liberalism: a counter-history" and its still great
nice, ive got this one queued up. just finished amin's "the liberal virus" which as a whole is a really good anti amerikkkan polemic, although it contains some strange parts, such as when he sketches out this idea of a hypothetical trajectory with a progressive eu as a part of a of an anti "Triad" progressive bloc because old europe liberalism has some nominal kernel of equality to it which can develop into something beyond the liberal, as he says "Europe will be left, or it will not be" which in hindsight (book was written in like 2004 i think) was truly overly optimistic, especially for a theorist of unequal exchange and unequal development like amin who is well aware of the cul de sac of social democracy in the FW. to his defence already by 2010 he seems to have explcitly renounced this possibility as improbable to the extent of impossibility (http://www.spectrezine.org/managing-euro-mission-impossible.html) .
This is a tonally strange book. he teaches at the London School of Economics, is a Labour Party activist, etc etc, so it's written in the voice of any generic development-NGO book, but he's clearly familiar with third worldism and anti-imperialism and tries to sneak in much more radical critique than is usual for the genre. Like, he talks about unequal exchange, which, as someone who's read a lot of shitty NGO books I can tell you is unprecedented, but he introduces it as "a concept among economists" without mentioning that those economists are weird marxists that all the other economists hate. It's like zak cope was giving a Ted talk.
Also suffers from a severe lack of class analysis. The labor aristocracy goes unmentioned, even though he hammers on about the flow of resources from the South to the North. As is customary, the book ends with a chapter on solutions, which I'm sure would be very good and helpful, but the question of who will force these policies through never comes up. If you were to ask him, I'd imagine he would say "Oxbridge graduates of good hearts" rather than "the revolutionary masses".
Fine book, might be worth recommending to your liberal friend too scared of Marxism to read cope or Smith.
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lo posted:on the back there was an author bio that was totally mundane and boring, except for the last sentence which read "Unfortunately, in 1968 he was hounded to death by the 'gang of four'."
Would buy in hope of finding a a historical conspiracy rabbithole and then never open again.
Been reading Negarestani's Cyclonopedia in light of recent developments in the Middle East. Pretty much just Goosebumps for Deleuzebros, tbh.
nomogram posted:lo posted:on the back there was an author bio that was totally mundane and boring, except for the last sentence which read "Unfortunately, in 1968 he was hounded to death by the 'gang of four'."
Would buy in hope of finding a a historical conspiracy rabbithole and then never open again.
Been reading Negarestani's Cyclonopedia in light of recent developments in the Middle East. Pretty much just Goosebumps for Deleuzebros, tbh.
Cyclonopedia was found in the remains of Suleimani’s vehicle
dimashq posted:Cyclonopedia was found in the remains of Suleimani’s vehicle
Not only am I going to believe you, I'm citing this in my master thesis
dimashq posted:theory-fiction
Like those weight loss candy bars but for reading theory, it's great
lenochodek posted:c_man posted:Still reading "liberalism: a counter-history" and its still great
nice, ive got this one queued up. just finished amin's "the liberal virus" which as a whole is a really good anti amerikkkan polemic, although it contains some strange parts, such as when he sketches out this idea of a hypothetical trajectory with a progressive eu as a part of a of an anti "Triad" progressive bloc because old europe liberalism has some nominal kernel of equality to it which can develop into something beyond the liberal, as he says "Europe will be left, or it will not be" which in hindsight (book was written in like 2004 i think) was truly overly optimistic, especially for a theorist of unequal exchange and unequal development like amin who is well aware of the cul de sac of social democracy in the FW. to his defence already by 2010 he seems to have explcitly renounced this possibility as improbable to the extent of impossibility (http://www.spectrezine.org/managing-euro-mission-impossible.html) .
I def read a 2016 Amin monthly review article where Amin is invoking this possibility. there's a rational kernel to it because european imperialism is increasingly no longer able to be satisfied within the contours of american world hegemony and inter-imperialist competition is bound to increase as the rate of profit falls. one only wonders why it's happened so slowly, especially with the USSR out of the picture. but you see it, with the europeans not willing to go along with the US over iraq, now iran, and they'd rather have normal commercial relations with china and russia and not have to import expensive oil from rick perry's backyard.
i just finished William Petty's economic writings so I'm gonna gather quotes from it now. there are some funny things in petty. the more well known is him saying law is best when the lawyers have the least to do, and religion is best when the clergymen are poorer and fewer, but his solution to the irish problem is also pretty amusing. not just granting them equal representation in parliament, but sending the american colonists into ireland to racially intermingle with them. I'm waiting on Locke's consequences of the lowering of the rate of interest to come in the mail.
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swampman posted:is the eric hobsbawm world history series good for reading. i could also read andrea dworkin but im trying to stall
i remember age of revolution being 'pretty good' but it's been ages since i read it.
ialdabaoth posted:post having-read-settlers
https://monthlyreview.org/2012/12/01/lenin-and-the-aristocracy-of-labor/
Yes
if anyone here wants to follow my classical political economy blog ^__________________________________^
RedMaistre posted:Have been on a Festugiere kick recently,
tpaine........
cars posted:RedMaistre posted:Have been on a Festugiere kick recently,
tpaine........
Feel terrible, just want him back 
toyot posted:https://kites-journal.org/2019/12/11/on-infantile-internet-disorders-and-real-questions-of-revolutionary-strategy-a-response-to-the-debate-over-the-universality-of-protracted-peoples-war/new journal, kites, from kersplebedeb
There's a lot good in this and a lot of crap. In terms of the history that needs to be understood to make any progress, we're at the exact same place: the history of the Peruvian revolution and the RIM, the real history of the GPCR mostly through more radical members of the Chinese new left, and the history of urban guerillas and proto-third worldism as we've explored on this site. This person's greatest weakness, which is quite common among Maoists, is that China has vanished from the Earth and therefore East Asia as the dynamic center of the new world economy cannot be understood. That's why the strategy ends up being the same after all the bluster, even with a shout out to Ilhan Omar. There are hints of what the global economy looks like today scattered throughout the piece but I don't think the objective, structural nature of imperialism is really understood. Obviously the spiritual stuff is silly as it's the memeish tone in places. But the questions that are asked are the right ones and you have to give credit for trying to answer them, and if the dogmatic Maoists are worthy of a polemic then they've been properly destroyed.