theory

This must be the dumbest motherfucker to have ever existed, I can't believe people consider them to be a genius in anything other than gaslighting and projection. Almost every single line could be ranked among the most absurd takes I have ever read. I did not know that it was possible to experience such intense feelings of cringe outside of Twitter. The industrial revolution and its consequences indeed.

These countries have the citizenry usually unarmed, while the military is usually highly homogeneous (usually ethnic and class unity within the military, and fiercely loyal to their masters).

Many of the citizens and residents that would benefit from material conditions improvement are also some of the least connected to the land, as they are usually immigrants whose families are elsewhere. They would not be protecting their families in any conflict, and would not benefit from the improvement to the lives of legal citizens.

It just seems that the periphery is better equipped for revolution, and Maoist third-worldism is more correct at analyzing the world. But maybe I am going about this analysis completely wrong, so please feel free to correct and link me to resources. Thanks guys

I adapt part of Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy to hopefully shed more light on the issue. Exploring 1) the Statist origins of Capitalism, 2) the Mercantilist and Colonialist policies used to bolster State-Capitalism, and 3) the Four Monopolies that maintain Capitalist hegemony in the market.

I've found a few .pdfs but nothing I can read on my e-reader.

There will definitely be duplicate books.

• Verso

• Haymarket

• Pluto Press

• Decolonize Palestine

• Palestinian Youth Movement

• Leeds Palestine Film Festival

• Palestine Festival of Literature

• Islamic Literary Society

• The New Arab

• Settler Colonialism w/ Palestine Reading List

• Dr. Hatem Bazian

• Pink Jinn

• Skin Deep Actions

• Stanford Islamic Studies

A longish, but fascinating, look at the computational constraints surrounding Soviet-style central planning, and some thoughts about how such planning might work with the assistance of modern computing power. You might know Cosma Shalizi from his excellent essay "Cognitive Democracy," which argues that coalitions of people who are more diverse (in all senses) tend to make better decisions.

Excerpt of Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

from the section titled "The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat"

>Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in the Manchester Guardian the following letter to the editor, which was published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing: > >>"MR. EDITOR,– For some time past our main streets are haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I should think that when one not only pays the poor-rate, but also contributes largely to the charitable institutions, one had done enough to earn a right to be spared such disagreeable and impertinent molestations. And why else do we pay such high rates for the maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect us so far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope the publication of these lines in your widely- circulated paper may induce the authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,– Your obedient servant, "A Lady." > >There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady"; she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no, the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxurious bourgeois.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch13.htm

>The metaphysical concept is thus constructed with logic and the syllogism. A syllogism is a group of three propositions: the first two are called premises, which means “sent before”; the third is the conclusion. Another example: “In the Soviet Union, before the last constitution, a dictatorship of the proletariat existed. Dictatorship is dictatorship. The U.S.S.R. is a dictatorship. Hence, there was no difference between the U.S.S.R., Italy and Germany, all countries of dictatorship.” Here, for whom and on whom the dictatorship is exercised is not taken into consideration; the same as when one boasts of bourgeois democracy, it is not mentioned for whose profit this democracy is exercised. In this way problems are stated, things and the social world are seen as belonging to separate circles and these circles are inserted into each other. These are certainly theoretical questions, but they entail a certain way of acting in practice. We can cite the unfortunate example of the Germany of 1919, where social-democracy, in order to maintain democracy, destroyed the dictatorship of the proletariat without seeing that by so doing it allowed capitalism to subsist and gave rise to nazism.

\- Georges Politzer, Elementary Principles of Philosophy

(Georges Politzer was killed by the Nazis in May 1942)

I want to understand more about these two crises of capitalism. How do they happen? How do they relate to each other?what is the context on the debate in leftist circles around them, as I know some groups prefer to emphasise one over the other. I have read a bit on Michael Roberts' blog, he definitely prefers to emphasise the falling rate of profit but some of it goes over my head.

Any books/articles on this stuff that comrades would recommend?

here is the summary and analysis, feel free to use this to follow along

This chapter is by far my favorite and the most interesting chapter. It is very much detached from the rest of the work, so if you are not caught up with the reading feel free to skip ahead to this one. Once again, I will be leaving the discussion open. Feel free to highlight your favorite parts, ask questions, put in your favorite questions. Try to respond to one other person's comment. Great work comrades for everyone who has completed the reading and keep it going to everyone getting caught up!

English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth

Schedule

8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence

8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture

9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion

its been a fun ride yall and I will eventually responed to every comment, its been a long week and im getting drunk tonight.

1892 English Edition Introduction to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels

here is the summary and analysis, feel free to use this to follow along

We are continuing from last week with no discussion questions this week to try to encourage a more natural dialogue. Just talk about what you liked, didn't like, didn't understand. Try to respond to one other person's comment even if it is just something short or to ask a question.

English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth

Schedule

8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence

8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture

9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm

People don't read prefaces enough. It's fully of juicy deets:

>Nevertheless, when it appeared [The Communist Manifesto], we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases, people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather to the “educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism — in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the working class itself,” [from the General Rules of the International] we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.

I think it's interesting how words change meaning. How Lenin and Stalin both treated Communism and Social Democracy as synonymous in the 1900s, but by the mid 1920s Social Democracy was regarded openly as the moderate wing of fascism, by Stalin. It makes me wonder how much confusion this causes.

The essay focuses on bananas as a symbol of the fruits of imperialism enjoyed by workers in the imperial metropole. As global revolution happens, the predatory and inhumane supply chains that currently bring bananas to the core will be dismantled while new supply chains are established; there cannot be a simple 'transference' of these chains from the imperialists to the workers and so there will be a period without bananas in the imperial core.

One note I want to add is to emphasize the joy of international solidarity during this process. We should not mourn bananas. Instead, we should celebrate our sisters in the Global Periphery breaking the brutal chains that bind them to plantations, to artisan mines, to unventilated factories. The joy of liberation is infinitely greater than the joy of consumption.

As an injury to one is an injury to all, so is the liberation of one the liberation of all!

From: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1906/12/x01.htm

>The most widespread, mass organisations are trade unions and workers' co-operatives (mainly producers' and consumers' co-operatives). The object of the trade unions is to fight (mainly) against industrial capital to improve the conditions of the workers within the limits of the present capitalist system. The object of the co-operatives is to fight (mainly) against merchant capital to secure an increase of consumption among the workers by reducing the prices of articles of prime necessity, also within the limits of the capitalist system, of course. The proletariat undoubtedly needs both trade unions and co-operatives as means of organising the proletarian masses. Hence, from the point of view of the proletarian socialism of Marx and Engels, the proletariat must utilise both these forms of organisation and reinforce and strengthen them, as far as this is possible under present political conditions, of course. > >But trade unions and co-operatives alone cannot satisfy the organisational needs of the militant proletariat. This is because the organisations mentioned cannot go beyond the limits of capitalism, for their object is to improve the conditions of the workers under the capitalist system. The workers, however, want to free themselves entirely from capitalist slavery, they want to smash these limits, and not merely operate within the limits of capitalism. Hence, in addition, an organisation is needed that will rally around itself the class-conscious elements of the workers of all trades, that will transform the proletariat into a conscious class and make it its chief aim to smash the capitalist system, to prepare for the socialist revolution. > >Such an organisation is the Social-Democratic Party of the proletariat. > >This Party must be a class party, and it must be quite independent of other parties—and this is because it is the party of the proletarian class, the emancipation of which can be brought about only by this class itself. > >This Party must be a revolutionary party—and this because the workers can be emancipated only by revolutionary means, by means of the socialist revolution. > >This Party must be an international party, the doors of the Party must be open to all class-conscious proletarians—and this because the emancipation of the workers is not a national but a social question, equally important for the Georgian proletarians, for the Russian proletarians, and for the proletarians of other nations. > >Hence, it is clear, that the more closely the proletarians of the different nations are united, the more thoroughly the national barriers which have been raised between them are demolished, the stronger will the Party of the proletariat be, and the more will the organisation of the proletariat in one indivisible class be facilitated. > >Hence, it is necessary, as far as possible, to introduce the principle of centralism in the proletarian organisations as against the looseness of federation — irrespective of whether these organisations are party, trade union or co-operative. > >It is also clear that all these organisations must be built on a democratic basis, in so far as this is not hindered by political or other conditions, of course. > >What should be the relations between the Party on the one hand and the co-operatives and trade unions on the other? Should the latter be party or non-party? The answer to this question depends upon where and under what conditions the proletariat has to fight. At all events, there can be no doubt that the friendlier the trade unions and co-operatives are towards the socialist party of the proletariat, the more fully will both develop. And this is because both these economic organisations, if they are not closely connected with a strong socialist party, often become petty, allow narrow craft interests to obscure general class interests and thereby cause great harm to the proletariat. It is therefore necessary, in all cases, to ensure that the trade unions and co-operatives are under the ideological and political influence of the Party. Only if this is done will the organisations mentioned be transformed into a socialist school that will organise the proletariat—at present split up into separate groups—into a conscious class. > >Such, in general, are the characteristic features of the proletarian socialism of Marx and Engels.

Lenin: "The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production..."

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My thoughts: It's fairly obvious now that "Bigger is Always Better" is wrong. It would have seemed more convincing 100 years ago. Bigger is sometimes better. Small-scale production has some advantages. (Do I need to state them? I'll leave it to the reader as an exercise.)

If Big Communism and Small Anarchism both have their uses in their contexts, some sort of dual-track economy is needed, two parallel ways of organising the means of production.

> Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.

here is the summary and analysis, feel free to use this to follow along

Im gonna switch it up and say no discussion question this week to try to encourage a more natural dialog socratic seminar style. just talk about what you liked, didn't like, didn't understand, and try to respond to one person in the comments! lets just give it a try! English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth

Schedule

8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence

8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture

9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion

Apparently Gramsci wrote about it in his prison notebooks. I searched around a bit but couldn't find them for free online, and I don't feel like giving money to Amazon.

Hey guys! welcome to chapter two of the Wretched of the Earth! Here is the summary and analysis we will be using for this book, feel free to use this to follow along if you cant complete the reading or need help catching up.

Chapter two is one of my favorites. It paints a wonderful painting of the colonized society and its potential paths and pitfalls to revolution. The key to this chapter is understanding the different players involved in a colonized society and the tensions between each other.

Some (optional) discussion questions:

1.Who is the lumpenproletariat? Why are the essential to a revolution, why is discounting their potential a mistake?

2. Who are the urban proletariat? what kind of positions do they have? why do they represent the "bourgeoisie fraction of the colonized population"?

3. Who are the rural masses, why are they often a hindrance to revolutions in the past, why are they also crucial? What role do witch doctors and tribal chief play in the lives of the rural masses?

4. Where will the political education of the masses come from? Why is it important?

5. What is the weakness of spontaneity?

Bonus: Try to tie in the concepts from chapter two to a real life countries, such as the events in Niger or Haiti (who is the lumpenproletariat, what are they doing ect).

feel free to ignore the discussion questions if they dont serve you, and just comment any thought, questions, and critiques you have of the chapter! also due dates are not conducive to a real education people! always go at your own pace you don't have to comment today.

English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth

Schedule

8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence

8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture

9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion

hello comrades here we shall be discussing The Wretched of the earth preface and chapter one On Violence i was gonna write my own summry for yall but this summary and analysis i found would serve you all better than what I could write this morning, my sincere apoligies I wiil start us off with some optional question promts!

what did you think of satare's preface?

what does Fanon mean by "replacing one species with another"?

who is the colonized intellectual? what role does he serve?

what does Fanon say about nationalist reformist movements? what are their failings?

why must decolonization be total and all encompassing?

why is the allocation of instruments of force important? I also want to encourage everyone to try to make critique of the reading.

these are just a few things to get the ball rolling, please let me know what I can do better! Please keep commenting and contributing to this thread through out the week for those of you not caught up, this isnt school there is no late work, in fact i hope people come back to these threads many times to see other comrades thoughts. lastly it seems like you guys really like the summary and study guide I found so I will keep using it in future post (its pretty cool its like sparknotes)

English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

Subscribe to them here: https://hexbear.net/search?q=!theorygroup%40lemmygrad.ml&type=All&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll

Now that we're a Federal People's Republic, we can get more comrades participating in study across the two domains.

I will be making the post for The Wretched of the Earth. I have also taken it upon my self to make short summaries of what we read for each post. I think we can split the book up by chapters in five parts. We would be counting the foreword and conclusion as part of the first and final chapters respectively. My thought process is that we take one week per chapter so that you guys can take your time with the book. Please let me know if that is too slow of a pace. regardless we will be having our first post on Sunday so have the forward, preface and chapter one On Violence read. the importance of this book cannot be understated, if you cant keep up with the post please read the summary and discussion in the comments.

The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by Frantz Fanon. It analyses the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and the broader social, cultural, and political implications of establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people.

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• English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The%20Wretched%20Of%20The%20Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

• English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

• Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damn%C3%A9s_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

• English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

----

Counting the preface by Sartre and the conclusion, there are 15 chapters/sections, so I would suggest taking about 15 days at it. I won't be able to take the initiative posting daily readings in the coming weeks because of reasons, so maybe @MF_COOM or @TraschcanOfIdeology or somecomrade else will volunteer to do that?

Reading socially is just so much better than reading alone.

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There was no appetite for bread when I asked, so I welcome other suggestions. Highly-upvoted comments in the thread will be bookclubbed. Some suggestions that're on my radar:

• David Graeber – Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (100 pages)

• Cockshott – Towards A New Socialism (199 pages)

• Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism

• Amílcar Cabral, Resistance and Decolonisation (205 pages)

• Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (251 pages)

• Bread Is the Devil: Win the Weight Loss Battle by Taking Control of Your Diet Demons by Heather Bauer and Kathy Matthews

How to achieve efficient allocation of resources and make the right decisions about what to produce:

• provide money to citizens (this would be conditional, but Taylor doesn't want to get into the conditions. No uggos, I suppose.)
• let them make consumer choices (output produced by state enterprises). This tells you how important goods are. The price reflects the importance.

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> "As such sole producer, the state maintains exchange relations with its citizens, buying their productive services with money and selling to them the commodities which it produces"

Ok what's interesting about this description is it's a fully centralised, fully planned economy. It's NOT free enterprise BUT it is a market economy. Production is centralised in the state – the state's interactions with people are market interactions (buying/selling/supply/demand)

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The planners set a price that fully covers production cost. This considers the scarcity and renewability of materials (land, non-renewable aquifers, etc.)

How could the planners figure out the costs of raw materials and intermediate goods?

• By trial-and-error.
• The amount of steel available is known.
• If the amount of a good isn't known, or if its amount exceeds demand (seawater), it has no price.

> Because the effective importances of the commodities are expressed in terms of money value, the importances of the several factors will be so expressed. At present it will be assumed-to prove this assumption will be the task of the second part of this paper-that the authorities of our socialist state will have proved able to ascertain with a sufficient degree of accuracy these effective importances or values of all the different kinds of primary factors, and that they will have embodied the results in arithmetic tables which I shall usually designate factor-valuation tables.

> In order to determine the cost of producing any particular commodity, let us say a sewing machine, it would be necessary to multiply the valuation of each factor used in producing that machine by the quantity of that factor so used and add together these different products. If the resultant total turned out to be thirty dollars, we should have to say that the producing of the sewing machine made a drain on the community's economic resources of thirty dollars; or, in other words, that its resources-cost was thirty dollars.

> "the kind of cost just explained, resources-cost, is in fact very closely allied to what, under our system, is often called expense-cost."

----

They know how much steel is, they're trying to set the price of steel:

• They estimate it
• If there's a steel mountain, they lower it. If there's unmet demand they raise it.

----

Vampire's thoughts and conclusion: it's interesting and a little sad to see how in those days people were coming up with market-based mechanisms to make Marxism work. Marx never wrote one essay on what the communist economy would look like. It was up to post-Marx communists to work out the theory. And market theorists like Taylor and Lange and Dickenson made contributions. The model described here is nothing like the economies of China or Vietnam today.

Congratulations to all who completed the 'How to be a good communist' book club. Let's keep the momentum going.

----

So how about unironically reading The Conquest of Bread? It's on Wikisource in English and French. Audio with a (significant) French accent here, and with an American accent here. Audio runs between 6 and 6½ hours.

It consists of a Preface (2412 words) and 17 chapters (totalling 69,004 words). The longest chapter (5) is 8760 words, but many are under 4000 or under 3000. (Hey Vampire why do you keep talking about word counts?? Well I'll tellya why, because if you're inviting somebody to commit to a task, they need to know the size of the task)

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Could do the preface and Chap 1 today (July 26th) and read one chapter a day til Aug 4. I'd rather not start tomorrow, because then the long chapter would fall on a Monday.

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If there's no interest, I'll read it by myself.

Hi all, if this isn't the appropriate comm for this post then please redirect me to a better one.

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I would like some constructive feedback on these articles. They're meant to serve as an FAQ-like rebuttal to common misconceptions, so that typical predictable questions (both good faith and bad faith) can be effortlessly handled by linking to the relevant page.

Because of this, the main target audiences are non-leftists and babby leftists. Feel welcome to crit the content but also the style, structure, theming, whatever. One question on my mind is if there is a good balance of clarity, succinctness and comprehensiveness, another question is whether the red-coloured links are a problem.

• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Communism_killed_100_million
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Capitalism_is_voluntary
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Defining_socialism
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Defining_communism

--- P.S. Sorry if the wiki name comes off as arrogant, it's really just a pun on 'red'

I mean, I knew the idea of dialectics. But I'd dismissed it as German metaphysics or the "iron laws of history" stuff that is embarrassing about 19th and 20th century socialism. I didn't see its relevance to practical politics, but look at the way Stalin uses dialectical thinking here –

> "How do the Social Democratic Parties in the West live and develop? Are there any internal antagonisms and differences over principles in those parties? Of course there are. Do they expose these antagonisms and try to overcome them honestly and frankly before the eyes of the masses of the Party? No, of course they do not. It is the practice of the Social Democrats to conceal these antagonisms, it is the practice of the Social Democrats to convert their conferences and congresses into masquerades, into official parades intended to show that all is well within the Party; every effort is made to conceal and gloss over the differences within the Party. But nothing but confusion and the intellectual impoverishment of the Party can result from such practices. This is one of the causes of the decline of Western European Social Democracy, which at one time was revolutionary, but is now reformist."

He is saying that Social Democrats are fence-sitters. They see the duality but don't follow it to its conclusion. Communists like Lenin grasped each duality and resolved it. When you don't follow do this, you wind up as a SocDem, a compromiser. SocDems see the tension between socialism and capitalism, and try to please everybody.

So, straight up - Read the Art of War. It's like baby's first book of strategy. Forget all the business dorks who think it gives them an edge in the corrugated cardboard industry or something. Fuck those guys. The Art of War is a solid treatise on when, why, and how to engage in conflict. It can be applied to all kinds of conflict at all levels. It also has some of the hardest lines in all of world literature.

• All warfare is based in deception

• If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle

• The acme of skill is not to win a thousand battles. The acme of skill is to win without fighting

• Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

When you're reading it try to look past the specifics of the iron age from which Sun Tzu is speaking and try to see how the underlying principles can be applied.

For instance, when he talks about positioning yourself on accessible ground, he is speaking about iron age armies. He says

> With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.

At an action in a city this might be applied to an open park - If there's a raised area move you crew there. There are numerous advantages - If it rains water will flow away from you. If you're approached by cops they'll have to move up hill towards you. The reach of their weapons will be shorter, and the opposite is true as well. You'll be able to see further and more clearly.

In a meeting this would mean positioning yourself where you are visible to the chair or the dominant political clique so they will see you when you or one of your allies is speaking. Position yourself where you can see opponents or hostile cliques so you can observe what they are doing and how they respond to propositions or discussions.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/11/01.htm#2

> "For this very reason, at the same time as he issued his revolutionary April Theses, Lenin issued the slogan for 'patient' propaganda among the masses to convince them of the correctness of those theses. Eight months were spent on that patient work. But they were revolutionary months, which are equal at least to years of ordinary, 'constitutional' times. We won the October Revolution because we were able to distinguish between a correct Party line and recognition of the correctness of the line by the masses. That the oppositionist heroes of 'super-human' leaps cannot and will not understand."

He is saying that Lenin understood that having the right theory is one thing, having popular support for it is another

Has anybody else read this book? I'm about halfway through and I feel like I've been learning a lot from this. While the book is endlessly critical of the former Soviet experiment and the modern PRC without cushioning it's critiques by acknowledging that much of their problematic climate elements are due to material conditions, I find many of their critiques and ideas refreshing.

I'm a little ambivalent on their information about Nuclear Power too, I personally had assumed that Nuclear tech was brought to an incredibly safe level.

But beyond that I think some of the central thesis of the book of treating nature as a "known unknown", and needing to harness the power of hopeful utopianism while making use of the best elements of scientific socialism, I think these are swell things to adopt. The book is, on the whole, a bit lib in the ways that utopian socialists are, but I do think at the end of the day it prescribes some necessary ideas that are seriously worth engaging with.

Has anyone else read this book and have any thoughts, or ways we can adapt this critique to the struggle of socialism?

• Text here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm – about 27,000 words, so about 100 minutes to read

• Audio here, British female AI speaker, 2h41m21s: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aeGlxpDvoqc&listen=1

• Audio here, American human male speaker: https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoZVLIJX6CLKGC9Vz6Gwv9kI&listen=1

----

It is nine chapters, so one chapter per day for nine days seems the obvious way to go.

Liu Shaoqi is an admirable figure, Chairman from 1959 to 1968, a pragmatist who came into conflict with the worst tendencies of Mao and the Gang of Four, praised by Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping. I'm getting more and more interested in the pragmatic Chinese Marxists who actually succeeded and built something with a strong eye to pragmatism, not idealism.

(Not gonna spam any more books / articles [today at least] but this one is Important)

This is an excellent essay that examines the similarities and differences between Marxist and Indigenous critiques of Capitalism. Imo they miss a bit in terms of the Marx side (mostly I'm just salty that they don't cite Marx in the Anthropocene), but overall this is an excellent piece that every single settler should be reading

This is a very important contemporary marxist work imo (despite being published only this year). It's VERY relevant to climate change, the question of production under socialism and communism. It's also essential if you wanna have an idea of what Marx was up to (in terms of theory) in the late 1870s until his death bc Saito's source for his arguments is the previously unpublished MEGA2 (which he worked on) and others' work on MEGA2. Highly recommend it, though it is somewhat (prolly VERY) abstract/academic.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/277223

> https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Library