It was a great read. Even better because I think the author is just a regular lib who now just writes for the Guardian, so there's no way to blow it off as propaganda. Lots of gems as far as statistics and anecdotes about how the GDR fulfilled its citizens needs, which were also helpful to conceptualize how things like crime and housing would be handled in a state transitioning to socialism. The committees tasked with looking at the material conditions behind certain crimes and figuring out how to implement restorative justice, and leaving petty crimes of theft up to the trade unions, seem to be especially helpful models in thinking about prison abolition. And programs where factories would allow their workers to use factory equipment to build their houses themselves on weekends as a solution to housing stock shortages. One of the sections that made me sad to think about what the world has lost with the GDRs fall is where the author describes how pubs and restaurants closed early, since people got their sense of community and socialization at work and after hours the focus was on private home life. People relied on familial networks for certain rare consumer goods, and so it seems like the bonds of your extended network of friends and family were closer because they weren't used more for economic support and wouldn't have had the baggage and power relations that brings. A quote toward the end of the book from a freelancer who left for the West:
In East Germany, when we spoke of friendship, we really meant friendship. It was not just an empty word, but a word with a definite meaning, signifying obligation. That was not the case here...one always seems to be doomed.
AZ_IZ_OT posted:isn’t stirner just chaos magick for leftists
thats very insulting to chaos magic
jansenist_drugstore posted:cars posted:stirner is the worst kind of writer, superficially clever & deeply stupid
i didn't say that he was a good writer, but that it was a worthwhile read despite his watery and foppish rhetoric. strangely the book was given to me by a girl in my office who recommended it because i was reading marcuse last month, though at this point i'm doubtful that she's actually read marcuse beyond ah, wikipaedo. she also made it her own by using four different colors of highlighter extensively throughout the book which has made the reading experience unique to say the least
I looked up Marcuse and liked this quotation, so please recommend me a book of his.
"Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production."
Parenti posted:jansenist_drugstore posted:cars posted:stirner is the worst kind of writer, superficially clever & deeply stupid
i didn't say that he was a good writer, but that it was a worthwhile read despite his watery and foppish rhetoric. strangely the book was given to me by a girl in my office who recommended it because i was reading marcuse last month, though at this point i'm doubtful that she's actually read marcuse beyond ah, wikipaedo. she also made it her own by using four different colors of highlighter extensively throughout the book which has made the reading experience unique to say the least
I looked up Marcuse and liked this quotation, so please recommend me a book of his.
"Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production."
Wait what the fuck this guy sucks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Marxism:_A_Critical_Analysis
jansenist_drugstore posted:she also made it her own by using four different colors of highlighter extensively throughout the book which has made the reading experience unique to say the least
this is what i mean when i say writing like stirner's is worse than someone who's obviously stupid in presentation
Edited by Themselves ()
red_shinobu posted:I'm reading ABC of Communism by Bukharin. He makes communism easily understandable.
this character cant be all that great if he hasn't got past the abcs yet
toyotathon posted:Dimashq posted:I ordered an Ernest Mandel book off Amazon two weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived. seems that the stalinists have infiltrated amazon and intercepted my trot literature.
i finished this book (WW2) last week and could talk here or over PMs about it if you'd like...
Hi toyatathon, I finished it like last week. It was alright overall, I think it's a good book to give to people who think in the popular Axis v Allies conception of what the Second World War was instead of the War as a continuation and climax of inter-imperialist competition for domination of Europe (UK and later the US against German capital), the Pacific (American against Japanese capital), and socialism and decolonization being the only way out of cyclical world war. Everyone on this forum already knows the basic information in this book (and there's better more advanced books out there if you want to read about the economics of WW2), but it's a easy short read to give to learning people as long as you tell them to ignore the rude mean stuff that Mandel has to say about our boi Stalin.
She was and is a fucking creep with her sister and should most def go into some in-depth psychoanalysis for that
toyotathon posted:what do ppl think about the safety of calibre's library hosting feature? i use it to organize me books and it's got a built-in server thing
running a server on your desktop or whatever is probably a bad idea. personally i would use a cheap VPS for this, even the AWS free tier would probably be fine if you just want to try it out and see if it's useful for you. there's some instructions here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-calibre-ebook-server-on-ubuntu-14-04
toyotathon posted:what do ppl think about the safety of calibre's library hosting feature? i use it to organize me books and it's got a built-in server thing
I've heard of people using it to serve books to friends and I've never heard of anyone getting pwned as a result. But I don't really use Calibre for organization that much so I just have a regular web server serving my books folder. I guess that makes for a more battle-tested but more popular target. You could also use the web server as a reverse proxy for Calibre. I think that way the server can handle the authentication and SSL for you instead of Calibre? I don't actually know anything about security though
BOFAnshen posted:Does any one have a pdf of “the military strategy of women and children” or “the coming of black genocide” by butch lee?
the military strategy is basically all reprinted in night-vision. there isn't much new stuff in it if you've already read that.
This isn’t to shit on anyone that wrongly predicted the end of capitalism. Marx was a brilliant scientist, but even he didn’t have a crystal ball. I’m just wrestling with the fact that, in light of all the times that capital has rallied for another round, this time, it really does look like the point where it all falls apart, but whether it happens in 15 years or 75 has a new significance. Because the planet’s only getting hotter, and every boatload of Sri Lankan coconut water or jumbo shrimp peeled in Thailand takes us that much closer to disaster. I don’t know if we can survive another Volcker Shock, this time. Those are my gloomy and mostly unconstructive thoughts, anyway.