#801

dizastar posted:

some ginger kid whose teeth were scraping the floor and who could repeat the permanent revolution gospel at incredible speed


lol

#802

swampman posted:

https://mcmxix.org/2019/10/23/caliban-and-the-witch-a-critical-analysis/wrap it up...........


"federici is an aggressive cherry-picker!!" yeah well, glass houses, fellas. christian critiques of the da vinci code have more decorum

#803
that book does have a lot of problems though. I definitely got taken in by it.
#804
In terms of academic rigor it arguably has less 'problems' than Settlers.
#805
it is always interesting to see the anti-communist left's adherence to cultural bourgeois values like "academic rigor" and "honesty". It isn't a surprise to see that the writers of this are trots, you see a lot of the same complaints from Charnel House in their 2,389 word self-own titled "Don't bother reading Settlers". Bourgeois academic rigor doesn't get us any closer to understanding the true nature of social relations, economic relations, and class relations.

We need more lies that tell the truth.
#806
#807
all of the legitimate parts of that critique are massively undermined by the dumb shit they say in response, particularly the unvarnished eurocentrism that emerges toward the end and erasure of Marx's later thought. to say nothing of the sneering gbs funny python stuff!
#808

Decolonization is not a metaphor, Tuck and Yang, 2012 posted:

In 1924, the Virginia legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which enforced the one-drop rule except for white people who claimed a distant Indian grandmother - the result of strong lobbying from the aristocratic “First Families of Virginia” who all claim to have descended from Pocahontas (including Nancy Reagan, born in 1921). Known as the Pocahontas Exception, this loophole allowed thousands of white people to claim Indian ancestry, while actual Indigenous people were reclassified as “colored” and disappeared off the public record.


nancy fricking reagan

Edited by tears ()

#809
huh, so you wrote a history book that trots like, wheres your cia badge then?
#810

B. The manipulation of iconography

But the main compensating technique used by the author, which sometimes comes down to pure and simple manipulation, remains the use she makes of iconography, particularly rich.4 Page 35, while she intends to demonstrate the extent of the decline of the status of women in modern times, which results in a more gendered division of labor than previously, the reader is offered an image that represents women masons in the Middle Ages:



At this moment of its reading, the circumspect reader finds these “masons” of the fifteenth century still very well dressed, and is surprised that one of them even wears a headdress with a royal appearance. In the absence of further details on the provenance of the illustration (a constant throughout the book),the reader then uses the internet to find the original image:



It can be seen that Silvia Federici has not only carefully amputated this image of its left side, which is much less in line with her thesis, but above all she has made it say exactly the opposite of what it says. Indeed, it turns out that the illustration is taken from a book by Christine de Pizan entitled La Cité des Dames, published in 1405,





i mean if you're going to make this a big part of your epic 2017 takedown demonstrating your attention to detail, checking sources, and your difficult detective work you would at least, at the very least, one would think, as part of your commitment to doing due diligence research, acknowledge the existence of both a first (2004) and a second (2014) edition of the book you are criticizing before going off on one? i mean come on.

#811
Would it be possible to add the original introduction of Settlers to readsettlers.org? It's very large and frames its goals within the larger Asian and socialist movement, and generally should be on it just for the sake of archival reasons. It's available here: http://fight4loop.org/j-sakai-the-original-introduction-to-settlers (If there's concerns with regards to permission, the person who transcribed this asked me before publishing already if the text can be uploaded to the site, though they'd like credit for the transcription if that's possible)

Edited by helius ()

#812
yeah we actually got an email about that today. we can credit the transcription.
#813
Has this text been confirmed with Sakai to accurately transcribe what's in this first edition? Or are there scans that confirm it?
#814
also there's a recent postscript where Sakai says all my posts are great, anyone going to transcribe that?? If not I'll take care of it
#815
I know everyone here will agree it's a bad idea to host text that hasn't been confirmed through review of the first edition in which it's supposed to appear. This can be done easily enough by linking e.g. scans of the text that's transcribed.
#816
show us the postscript
#817




Here are photos of the relevant passages. Personally, i feel like going from the assumption that someone invented the text is quite a weird assumption to start with,(especially because i doubt it's that easy to write exactly in the way sakai does, and referring to the specific instances he does in that introduction) but here they are and you can look for every typo, irregularity, and so forth to your heart's content.
#818
thanks helius. i don't think it's particularly unreasonable or even accusatory to request the ability to put more than one pair of eyes on a source tho, it's just due diligence
#819

helius posted:

going from the assumption that someone invented the text is quite a weird assumption to start with,


rather than an attack on whoever typed this up and posted it, it's indicative of the high esteem in which the book is held that people would ask a very simple and modest measure of authenticity when this text suddenly appears online after decades.

#820
quite a weird assumption indeed...
#821

Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia posted:

helius posted:

going from the assumption that someone invented the text is quite a weird assumption to start with,

rather than an attack on whoever typed this up and posted it, it's indicative of the high esteem in which the book is held that people would ask a very simple and modest measure of authenticity when this text suddenly appears online after decades.


sure, i just woke up to the deluge of posts asking for a photo of the original and felt more than a bit miffed by this, really, which made me voice this -- it's not unreasonable to ask for a photo of the original, especially if it's supposed to be uploaded to the website, by any means. settlers is a well-known text online, thankfully, so saying it should be substantiated with photos is reasonable. (especially if to check with potential typos, etc.) either way, i don't intend to press more on this, considering the matter is settled, for what it's worth (hopefully).

#822
was there any more labor needed on this project? i know there was some transcription going on, and some formatting for a while, but i havent checked in in a minute
#823

JohnBeige posted:

was there any more labor needed on this project? i know there was some transcription going on, and some formatting for a while, but i havent checked in in a minute


i stalled on the citation work after doing a few chapters a couple of years back. Chapters 5-10 still need doing, but iirc I have chapter 5 "done" on an old computer, you would have to go back in the thread some pages to see where we had got to as I have forgotten. its pretty unrewarding since who checks references right, but also i should point out very spiritually rewarding and will probably look good during for instance particular judgement, or any other post-death judging which may or may not occur.

at the time open library + archiveDOTorg allowed me to steal lots of book chapters, so, thanks to my diligent work if you click the reference at the bottom of some of the early chapters it will take you to a pdf of the entire chapter which Settlers references. based on recent drama im thinking about getting really mad about how no one respect me for this, probably on twitter

#824
I think whatever effect its going to have on people wont be impacted too much by more work. its mostly done. I think we'll put the original intro up there but thats about all I think it needs.
#825
it is a living document. you are the zookeeper. and we WILL be chucking bags of crisps into the enclosure for years to come
#826
New smear just dropped https://skeptomai.substack.com/p/j-sakai-mim-and-anarchism?fbclid=IwAR1OOeef2TrxKfWV8-nkl7Z9bhdVBzfmwLNNsPe_A2W35ml1y5m4bRgbtfo&fs=e&s=cl
#827

Overall, I don’t believe J. Sakai is a Marxist-Leninist (Maoist). His poor understanding of Marxism, his suspiciously close connections with Anarchists, and his blatant revisionism make me doubt that he’s a Maoist. But this is all assuming that J. Sakai exists as a person. I don’t actually know if J. Sakai is an actual individual or a pseudonym used by MIM until MIM allowed Kersplebedeb to take the pseudonym since the year 2000. I lean towards the view that J. Sakai is merely a pseudonym used by MIM until the year 2000. I also suspect that MIM probably has connections with the Feds. MIM is probably used by the Feds as a propaganda machine to propagate Settlers in order to sow division among Marxist-Leninists. But these are just my hunches. What I do know is that J. Sakai is a very suspicious individual.


inspector clouseau on the case

#828
I've seen a bunch of different theories about fascism within Marxist thought alone, that variously emphasize the role played by downwardly mobile petty bourgeoisie, finance capital, the relation therebetween, the category of the internal colony, etc.

There's a time and a place to launch a charge of "revisionism," and it's generally when you sideline a category as central as "the dictatorship of the proletariat" or "class struggle." I don't think the version of revisionism so broad as to include peripheral takes like "disagreeing with Georgi Dimitrov on how to best characterize fascism" is conducive to the growth of Marxism as a living, vibrant scientific endeavor

but what do I know, I don't have a substack
#829
several paragraphs of p.o. box analysis that reveals that post offices are frequently located downtown near other things
#830

stegosaurus posted:

several paragraphs of p.o. box analysis that reveals that post offices are frequently located downtown near other things


They include the cia, famously not headquartered downtown, in this list of things near the PO Box.

#831
Apparently having a publisher makes you a "member" of the publishing house? You learn new things every day
#832
i've seen a few bizarre twitter people who seem to believe that sakai is a fed and/or not a real person too, i'm not totally sure where it originated. i have an idea that maybe it's coming from some of those weird opportunist dengist people that seem to populate the american microparties now but that's just me speculating
#833
https://skeptomai.substack.com/p/the-origin-of-settlers-part-ii-j
https://skeptomai.substack.com/p/origin-of-settlers-part-iii-the-precursor

"Sakai is an anarchist fake-Maoist revisionist, if he's even real"
*does the most basic research into the New Left and the black liberation movement*
"My God...the conspiracy goes even deeper than I imagined"
#834
i like when that person says that it's suspicious that morningstar press only published settlers and there's no record of it existing as a 'publishing company'. just no concept at all of how someone might publish a niche non commercial book in a small edition
#835
known anarchist kerspleberaderb lol
#836
'read settlers' becoming a meme was funny, but its resulted in a ton of people attacking a book they have not read, spurring others to leap to the defense of a book they also have not read. but it's all been worthwhile because someone, somewhere, probably read settlers
#837

lo posted:

i'm not totally sure where it originated


you gave you all the clues!

lo posted:

a few bizarre twitter people who seem to be...fed and/or not a real person too


#838
If my reader checks the zip code 20013, they’ll see that it’s roughly adjacent to a large area where (I’m too busy checking zip code 20013 to hear the large area it’s roughly adjacent to)
#839

lo posted:

i like when that person says that it's suspicious that morningstar press only published settlers and there's no record of it existing as a 'publishing company'. just no concept at all of how someone might publish a niche non commercial book in a small edition



a mark of decline in the quality of ultra-leftist in the English-speaking world over the last twenty years, that the ultra-leftist of today looks back at the technique of micro-publishing houses with befuddlement, all internal knowledge of their own tendency evaporated overnight. “why didn’t he just make a substack? Publishing anything by ourselves sounds awfully suspicious, we didn’t ever actually do that did we???” I guess it counts as irony that the anarchists this writer is denouncing have had the same thing happen.

#840
the bit that made me especially laugh is the idea that "j sakai" is a collaborative project of multiple authors - of all the contemporary marxist authors out there this is the one you think is a group effort - like buddy, have you even read any of his prose? give me a mechanism, give me anything, throw me a frickin bone here