lo posted:Belphegor posted:I just started that book yesterday! Which you would have known if you were in the chatroom...
much like the nomadic pastoral mode of production after it has conquered a sedentary society, the chatroom is parasitic on the forum, merely stifling the growth of the forum's production while producing nothing of its own.
It’s a good safety valve so people post less about their boring and inconsequential lives. Y’all are being saved from extensive factorio chat
pogfan1996 posted:It’s a good safety valve so people post less about their boring and inconsequential lives.
good wway to get me to shut up. on the forums
second_axiom posted:pogfan1996 posted:It’s a good safety valve so people post less about their boring and inconsequential lives.
good wway to get me to shut up. on the forums
I retract my claim that the chat room is an effective safety valve
lo posted:i'm reading perry anderson's 'passages from antiquity to feudalism' and i'm learning all about different premodern modes of production, such as the slave mode of production, the feudal mode of production, and other auxiliary modes of production like the nomad pastoral mode of production. i heard that if you use a link cable with another copy of the book you can unlock a secret mode of production as well, which is helpful because i intend to collect all the modes of production and become a modes of production master.
tears posted:1. does the chatroom have watch2gether or equivalent integration so we can watch vintage skrillex memes and 2. does it have integrated minigames with chatroom wide leaderboards?
every time I suggest building an Omaha Hi/Lo room into this site my posting star burns off another layer of Irony
What's at the core of this idea is something I don't know gets discussed much: what other options the South's slaveholder upper class saw for themselves (or anyone else saw for them) beyond unlikely Western expansion of slavery into new ventures, such as gold & silver mining, to the same degree as plantation farming, if the upper class wanted to avoid a politically dangerous future concentration of slaves in proportion to whites of any class—that is, an outcome of sheer population growth that made widespread slave rebellions, Denmark Vesey times ten, likely in places such as Charleston and Richmond. The problem was known and discussed. Any alternatives advanced at the time are harder to find.
"Colonization" (in the sense of Liberia and the ACS) never came together as a major political force despite a lot of support among big-time elites in the North and Upper South, in part because forcible overseas relocation of Blacks, free or slave, was likely the only way to make it happen but would probably have led to mass violence anyway and everyone knew that. It just wasn't going to happen. And it certainly wasn't in the heads of Southern slaveholders that slaves were averse to rebellion in such circumstances. If anything, there was intense suspicion of the opposite, that slaves in greater proportions would be easily driven to rebel. The slave rebellions of the first half of the 1800s led to all sorts of paranoia-fueled measures, like Charleston declaring that every sailor deemed Black would be jailed by the city as long as his ship was in port.
To me it seems like the only recourse of Southern governments might have been mechanized murder of slave populations, a sort of late-19th-century equivalent to Nazi death camps with corresponding attempts to hide what was happening from the targeted group and the world at large. But I'm not really interested in this in the sense of "alternate history". I'm more looking for what, if any, other options real, existing political writers in the antebelleum-period U.S. saw for the future of Southern white leadership over a population of slaves that would not stop expanding, beyond an immediate Western expansion of slavery, and not in the sense of slave states and free states, but in the movement of slave populations westward for some economically viable venture no one could name.
(The problem of what Western slavery would actually mean economically was a big one itself, and it got discussed a lot. Daniel Webster had famous contempt for the idea of slavery's expansion into the West for exactly the reason that he couldn't imagine anything like cotton or rice or sugarcane plantations emerging in that climate, and again, it's one of the big reasons why Southern politicians weren't satisfied with Mexico and wanted Cuba as well, so much that they just could not shut up about it. It's not that someone couldn't conceivably have made e.g. gold mines into a national slave-power venture, but rather that they'd never manage to employ as much labor power as plantation farming just by the physical realities under which veins were discovered and mines established and exploited to exhaustion. Everyone knew that and the problem it presented, and that damned the whole idea of the West as a "safety valve" for slavery.)
So far what I've found, beyond those few who dared to predict civil war, has been just outright denial of reality by writers in both North and South, that either (as advanced by writers in the North) the crisis of an expanding slave population would end in the peaceful, necessary abolition of slavery (by Southern state governments already physically threatened by slave revolts...?) or a demographic crisis just wouldn't happen (as advanced by writers in the South), because slavery was the immutable condition of civilized societies and blah blah blah, which I have to imagine worked better for sympathetic readers as a moral defense of slave power than as a prediction of future population changes the educated among them could work out in their heads in a few seconds. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, or maybe it's just one of those contradictions that could not be resolved through liberal thinking in anyone's mind and didn't even attract the usual weirdos advancing utopian strategies. My guess is the former, because this is within areas of interest to me but outside my area of expertise.
I’m instead saying realistic options didn’t abound for plantation owners in the U.S. South. For instance, Cuba itself was a pipe dream, since it already had a slave-labor plantation system, and the immediate object of conquering it would be to seize property for distribution among the victors. For the same market-competitive reasons, even if a conquering force slaughtered Cuba’s large free Black population, it’s hard to imagine one killing off hundreds of thousands of valuable slaves, destroying Cuba’s immediate productive power as a prize, with the collective plan of making way for slaves from U.S. soil. Who among the biggest backers of invasion would agree to that if any of them might seize a fortune in both land and slaves, bought with other people’s blood? So I’m curious what anyone offered up as alternatives to what seems like a guaranteed future political crisis, or if no one bothered and everyone just stuck to arguing for absurdities as though they made sense.
Acdtrux posted:
writing like you've contributed to 1m+ wikipedia entries
lo posted:i liked that perry anderson book so much that now i'm reading the thrilling conclusion to the perry anderson SaGa, 'lineages of the absolutist state'. i love all the detailed and intricate materialist analysis, and i can't wait to see how the absolutism boys get out of this bind they've found themselves in
It's a good book, feel like there's truth to his central thesis of absolutism being a period where king and aristocracy work hand in hand to the benefit of both, but it remains pretty vague and, despite his attempts at analyzing non-western european societies, it's obviously still heavily focused on western europe. To be fair to him, given his background and nationality, he did make an effort. If you haven't already you should read something like Samir Amin's eurocentrism afterwards to really get the sense of how it's all linked (even tho Amin sort of fetishizes european "modernity", can't shake the french education there).
ultragauchiste posted:lo posted:
i liked that perry anderson book so much that now i'm reading the thrilling conclusion to the perry anderson SaGa, 'lineages of the absolutist state'. i love all the detailed and intricate materialist analysis, and i can't wait to see how the absolutism boys get out of this bind they've found themselves in
It's a good book, feel like there's truth to his central thesis of absolutism being a period where king and aristocracy work hand in hand to the benefit of both, but it remains pretty vague and, despite his attempts at analyzing non-western european societies, it's obviously still heavily focused on western europe. To be fair to him, given his background and nationality, he did make an effort. If you haven't already you should read something like Samir Amin's eurocentrism afterwards to really get the sense of how it's all linked (even tho Amin sort of fetishizes european "modernity", can't shake the french education there).
i've never read amin but he sounds cool, and it turns out that he said some 'controversial' stuff about pol pot, so he's going on my list sooner than he would have otherwise. i would also like to read any other people that analyse the mode of production of premodern societies in a similar way to anderson. like if there's dudes doing that sort of stuff for ancient egypt or medieval islamic world or wherever that would be cool to read
lo posted:ultragauchiste posted:lo posted:
i liked that perry anderson book so much that now i'm reading the thrilling conclusion to the perry anderson SaGa, 'lineages of the absolutist state'. i love all the detailed and intricate materialist analysis, and i can't wait to see how the absolutism boys get out of this bind they've found themselves in
It's a good book, feel like there's truth to his central thesis of absolutism being a period where king and aristocracy work hand in hand to the benefit of both, but it remains pretty vague and, despite his attempts at analyzing non-western european societies, it's obviously still heavily focused on western europe. To be fair to him, given his background and nationality, he did make an effort. If you haven't already you should read something like Samir Amin's eurocentrism afterwards to really get the sense of how it's all linked (even tho Amin sort of fetishizes european "modernity", can't shake the french education there).i've never read amin but he sounds cool, and it turns out that he said some 'controversial' stuff about pol pot, so he's going on my list sooner than he would have otherwise. i would also like to read any other people that analyse the mode of production of premodern societies in a similar way to anderson. like if there's dudes doing that sort of stuff for ancient egypt or medieval islamic world or wherever that would be cool to read
de Ste Croix’s Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World for the ancient classical Mediterranean, published after Passages with more detail (to an extreme degree at times)
I have this on my to read list: Before European Hegemony: The World System 1250-1350 by Janet Abu Lughod
Samir Amin like the other poster said
Andre Gunder Frank goes against the Eurocentric grain w/ world systems theory as well although I haven’t yet read him.
toyot posted:i'm reading The Necrophilic Landscape by ex rhizzone poster tracy auch, aka ??? does anyone know her s/n on here?
https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/15967/?page=1#post-402706
rip
I honestly think they imagine that as they win working-class people to revolution, they will soften them, “civilize” them, make them gentler and more like Leftbook or radical-liberal Tumblr says people should be: You are valid!
This dichotomy of real working class vs internet leftists comes up again and again in criticisms like this one but I don't think it's valid. We can yell at internet kids all day about their many shortcomings and maybe sometimes we should but I don't get why we should pretend that internet forums are anything other than places to exchange messages. I mean the Rhizzone has been miles ahead of all those spaces but we know we're not a revolutionary organization and we don't aim to develop each other as cadre. The only way this criticism makes sense to pursue is by buying into the delusions of the internet leftists that they're in any way poised to create revolution through their keyboards.
I've found that undesirable internet sub-cultural traits do sometimes bleed through into real life organizing. Either because participants of those communities get into real life or people who began from practical organizing get into the internet stuff to talk to more like-minded people than are available immediately around them. But for one, those things that look so stupid through tweets and profile pics make a lot more sense coming from real faces. If someone is a bit sensitive or fragile, we help them stand up taller and get stronger with understanding and encouragement. They probably have some reasons for being the way they are and saying "man up" won't help. For two, the venue to fix it is at the site of organizing, not facebook and twitter spheres. The drivers of that behavior online are not accessible through the platforms themselves. And even if you could change it, the result would be arguably worse. "Scumbag leftists" with inflated egos and a love for ad hominem are quick to point out this same fragility issue but they just use it as an excuse to act more insufferably than everyone else.
Fragile people who get into real organizing are much more valuable than leftbook users who talk like the guys after work. It's not fragility that's the problem.
toyot posted:
So are you saying that the correct path for revolutionaries is to proletarianize themselves? cause I think there's two issues here.
One is that the proletariat are the revolutionary class, they change the world with their activity as a class and in those terms it follows that someone wishing to change the world should become a true proletarian and learn many technical skills. Of course I agree with that, everyone should try to get some technical knowledge and production skills regardless of who they are, it'll help them understand the world better and be more competent in life. In high school I was exposed to some engineering curriculum and it made me understand that practically every single thing I see in my daily life was made out of some kind of material, through some kind of process, done by a whole host of people. I began to see through commodity fetishism early on and it changed the way I looked at the world. If you want to effect this revolutionary class you should be able to understand it as well, and that can best be done through social practice, so to that end of it's also important to live as a member of this class.
However, the proletariat only does all these grand things as a class, not as individuals, and it does not do them organized autonomously except for a few times in history so far. So becoming a proletarian in itself isn't a good revolutionary strategy. It doesn't necessarily make you any more capable of organizing the proletariat or a better person, it just means you sell your labor for capital's ends. Learning how to organize effectively via speaking, writing, leading, following, acting tough or being genuinely vulnerable as the situation calls for it and recognizing those situations is honestly more important than being able to operate a drill press or install drywall.
Acdtrux posted:dizastar posted:really i don't understand how the sentence "They do not use PC language." is not in contradiction with the sentence "And most important at all times is that our politics are as correct as they possibly can be."
It means men get to joke about rape because women’s liberation needs to take a back seat to class struggle
colddays posted:I honestly think they imagine that as they win working-class people to revolution, they will soften them, “civilize” them, make them gentler and more like Leftbook or radical-liberal Tumblr says people should be: You are valid!
This dichotomy of real working class vs internet leftists comes up again and again in criticisms like this one but I don't think it's valid. We can yell at internet kids all day about their many shortcomings and maybe sometimes we should but I don't get why we should pretend that internet forums are anything other than places to exchange messages. I mean the Rhizzone has been miles ahead of all those spaces but we know we're not a revolutionary organization and we don't aim to develop each other as cadre. The only way this criticism makes sense to pursue is by buying into the delusions of the internet leftists that they're in any way poised to create revolution through their keyboards.
I've found that undesirable internet sub-cultural traits do sometimes bleed through into real life organizing. Either because participants of those communities get into real life or people who began from practical organizing get into the internet stuff to talk to more like-minded people than are available immediately around them. But for one, those things that look so stupid through tweets and profile pics make a lot more sense coming from real faces. If someone is a bit sensitive or fragile, we help them stand up taller and get stronger with understanding and encouragement. They probably have some reasons for being the way they are and saying "man up" won't help. For two, the venue to fix it is at the site of organizing, not facebook and twitter spheres. The drivers of that behavior online are not accessible through the platforms themselves. And even if you could change it, the result would be arguably worse. "Scumbag leftists" with inflated egos and a love for ad hominem are quick to point out this same fragility issue but they just use it as an excuse to act more insufferably than everyone else.
Fragile people who get into real organizing are much more valuable than leftbook users who talk like the guys after work. It's not fragility that's the problem.
you find people saying really stupid shit in "irl organizing spaces" too. everyone's "online" to some degree. ive heard people harp on about the revolutionary potential of bitcoin and open source and suggest that a union should prioritize a prudently invested income fund
Edited by c_man ()
c_man posted:ive stalled out on "man withouth qualities"
thanks for standing me up bro